


restless in the unquiet earth

by OfShoesAndShips



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke, Wuthering Heights - All Media Types
Genre: JSAMN Big Bang, M/M, Wuthering Heights AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 02:38:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8693119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: There is something not quite about Hurtfew Abbey. Its master, Mr Gilbert Norrell, has disappeared, and taken his library with him – yet he seems to linger still. John Segundus, new to Yorkshire, arrives seeking answers – but the guardian of the house, John Childermass, is cagy and inhospitable. It is Childermass’s cook, Hannah Winthrop, who takes it upon herself to tell what she can of the disappearance. The story she tells, however, infers something that John Segundus has never dared hope – that magic may be returning to England.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my contribution to the Big Bang - I can't believe it's done! Thank you to the Big Bang organisers for the opportunity to participate, pollyprouvaire for being my gifter, and most of all my wonderful partner bookhobbit for their support, advice and beta'ing.
> 
> Special thanks to last semester's Victorian Literature professor, who made me finally read Wuthering Heights in the first place. I owe you one.
> 
> I have had to fudge the chronology of both books to make them fit, please forgive me if it jarrs.

_(and this is what the story is - a tale told to a man who knows no better, a tale told by a woman who loves and hates and loves and loves and loves, a woman twisted up by guilt and other peoples’ hate, a woman inside and outside both at once. Telling tales twisted up by time and hindsight._

_But this is what the story could have been.)_

_1801 –_ I am lately returned from the house of my landlord, and the owner of that which has tempted me to this solitary corner of the north. And what a solitary corner it is! But for he and I and our respective lodging houses, there is no-one, no sign of civilisation, until one reaches Thorpe Underwood, an hour or so’s ride across the moor. It is the most singularly Aureate-esque expanse of country I have seen in my life! Such wide moors, such sublime skies!

Indeed, an entirely appropriate environment for my – why I cannot write mission in my own journal, I do not know, but that is the state of the matter. There is no more perfect location for Mr Norrell’s library. Or there would not have been, had the books been present. Mr Honeyfoot will insist on the full tale, I am sure, and so I shall relate it while it is still fresh in my mind.

Mr Childermass, my landlord and the current owner of both Hurtfew and its library, is – I fear it is misleading to call him a capital fellow, since when I rode up to the gate of Hurtfew he was glaring with a most misanthropic fashion, scowling darkly and apparently unwilling to receive guests; yet when I alighted, his expression seemed to warm.

“Mr Segundus?” he asked, and I replied, somewhat out of breath since I remain a particularly skittish rider, that I was he, and that I had come to call upon him as soon I was able.

“Impatient to see my library, I suppose?”

I could only blush at this, but there was a gentle wryness in his tone that spared me the full weight of embarrassment.

After a moment, and a stalling cough, I gathered enough of my wits to say: “I hope I have not inconvenienced you, sir, in visiting at such a time, nor in soliciting Starecross Grange-”

“Starecross Grange is my own, Mr Segundus – if it were an inconvenience to have tenants, I would not have rented it. Come in; it is too cold to loiter.”

He called one of the servants to take my horse, and led me up to the doors to Hurtfew. It was a newer house than I expected, a little over a century if the date above the door was to be believed; but the harshness of the Yorkshire weather had given it enough wear that if not for the date I could have believed it having been of five hundred years standing. The wind, which blew in what Mr Childermass informed me was a pale imitation of its usual self – in deference to my lack of Northern fortitude, as he phrased it – had bent and stunted all of the trees we passed, which had the effect of making the house – large, tall, square – seem as proud and straight-backed as its owner.

I was too conscious of the impolitic of asking after Mr Norrell, who I had been led to believe was the owner of Hurtfew, to assuage my curiosity on the matter of his absence; until the legal documents associated with renting the Grange had crossed my desk, I had believed Mr Childermass to be Mr Norrell’s lawyer, or steward, or some other such thing. The York Society had told me that Mr Norrell was reclusive, that he had ignored the letters the society had sent him this twelvemonth; but by all accounts he remained of this earth. And yet Mr Norrell was no longer the master of his house, and Mr Childermass was.

Mr Childermass is not the kind of man one would immediately suspect of owning a house as grand as Hurtfew Abbey, let alone both Hurtfew and the Grange; he has the bearing and speech of a gentleman, but his hands I noticed were work-roughened, his skin dark in such a way as to suggest perhaps Eastern heritage, and his dress neat but shabbier even than my own. Mine, I reflected with a little humour, was only ten years out of style – his, at least twenty. He has an intelligent look – more so than I have ever managed to cultivate, and more so than most gentlemen of my acquaintance – but he also has a way of holding his features that suggests he is finding an almost cruel amusement in the society of anyone beyond himself.

I have diverged from the thread of my tale; Mr Honeyfoot may appreciate my rambles, but I doubt my purse would appreciate the cost of another journal so close on the heels of the first.

Mr Childermass led me around the house to the kitchen garden; he held the gate and gestured me through into a small though neat and currently sparse vegetable plot, and then directed me in to the house through the kitchen door. He apologised – though not overly sincerely, I felt – for the informality of my entrance, but explained that he had closed most of the house off when he inherited it. One man and a few servants hardly required much space, he said, and I nodded in agreement. Until renting Starecross Grange, I had spent almost all my adult years in lodging houses, and had been finding Starecross uncomfortably large.

The kitchen itself seemed of a decent size, with a large fire and a table in the centre at which Mr Childermass bade me sit. There was a lady humming to herself in front of the stove, and at the sound of Mr Childermass’s voice she turned. She was a large, soft-featured woman who appeared of an age with my landlord; she blinked in surprise upon seeing me, but recovered herself quickly.

“Welcome to Hurtfew Abbey, sir,” she said, “Since knowing John he won’t have wished you anything of the kind.”

It was my turn to blink; I had taken her for a servant, but no servant I had ever known had such a free manner with their master. I presumed therefore that Yorkshire ladies must have a much closer relationship with the running of the household than their kin in the south, and bowed to her.

“Thank you, Mrs Childermass, I am obliged to you-;”

No sooner had this sentence passed my lips than Mr Childermass and the lady I had taken for his wife both began to laugh, though not unkindly. Still, I found yet another blush rising.

“This is Mrs Winthrop, my cook,” said Mr Childermass, as he was the first to regain his senses, “But you are not the first to presume as you did, so please. Do sit. Could you fetch the man something to drink, Hannah?”

Mrs Winthrop nodded and swept over to the liquor cabinet, which was on the other side of the kitchen; when she passed me I felt the air move as if she had reached out to pat my shoulder and stopped herself.

I, finding it difficult to recover from two bouts of embarrassment in such quick succession, absorbed myself in tracing the grain of the table-top. Mr Childermass seemed comfortable enough with the silence, for he didn’t attempt to start a conversation until Mrs Winthrop brought us wine and glasses and bustled out with some statement of intention that even I could tell was a pretext.

I am not over fond of wine, or indeed alcohol more generally, and so when Mr Childermass poured I stopped him almost as soon as the wine hit the glass. He poured himself the same amount with that amused, twisted smile of his, and leant back in his chair.

“I’m afraid I shall have to disappoint you, Mr Segundus.”

“Is the wine terrible?” I asked, and was sure I must have pulled a ridiculous expression of surprise at the boldness of my own tongue.

Mr Childermass’s smile in response was entirely genuine, if small and tight.

“No; I believe you would forgive me bad wine. This, however, I fear that you will not.”

I am not sure now what I was imagining upon hearing those words; I know only that my hand tightened around the wineglass, that I felt terror settle on me like a fog.

“You are a man of magic, sir,” my landlord continued, and I nodded. I did not keep it any secret; after all, I am a scholar, no matter how I wish to be more.

“I have read your monograph, you see – I could not remember how I knew your name, until I found it in my papers a few days ago. I know it is not just the draw of the Raven King’s Country that has brought you here, and it is in that matter I must disappoint you.”

I hate to think how I must have seemed at that moment; the confusion on my face must have been most unbecoming.

“For you see-” for the first time, Mr Childermass faltered, and took a sip of wine. Contrary to his previous assertion on the wine’s quality, he winced.          

“You see, Mr Norrell disappeared a year ago. And with him – I may as well just say it – and with him went the books.”

 

\--

 

Perhaps some more worldly man would have demanded to see the library, would have asked why no word of this had seemed to reach past Hurtfew’s own four walls, would have given up his tenancy then and there and caught a carriage back to London. I did none of these things. I hope it is not too much a stain on my character that all I could do in response was to sip my wine and say _Well_ in such a tone as to suggest to Mr Childermass I had no intention of making a fuss.

At the time I almost believed I saw him relax at this, though now I believe I may have been seeing what I hoped to see.

“I have notes of my own on some of the texts that Mr Norrell took with him,” he carried on, “Which you are welcome to look through if you desire, but I can do no more than that. I do apologise, Mr Segundus. If you desire to give up your tenancy, I would not begrudge it.”

I shook my head. “I would appreciate the opportunity to peruse your notes, if I may, and of course I do feel the loss of the library, which I had heard was the greatest in the country after the Duke of Roxburgh’s,” Mr Childermass looked as if he wished to contradict me on this point, but did not, “But I have not yet any intention of giving up my tenancy. It being the Raven King’s country is more of a draw than you think,” I added, smiling, and Mr Childermass’s smirk reappeared.

We were silent, for a moment, and then Mr Childermass stood and took his glass over to the counter-top, where he left it to be washed and turned around to face me once more.

“I’m sure Hannah would not mind stretching dinner to one more mouth, if you wished to stay a while.  Dido – my housekeeper – tells me it’s looking to storm, and I would be a very remiss landlord if I risked sending you off across the moor with such weather coming, not with you unfamiliar with both the country and your horse.”

It took me a moment to realise that this was an offer, and not an insult; once I understood him, I nodded. “If it is not too much trouble, sir, I believe I would enjoy that.”

He looked at me carefully for a moment, a strange look coming into his eyes.

“It’s never too much trouble to be able to discuss magic at my own dinner-table,” he said, in a tone which even at the time I felt sounded a little out of character.

“You have never spent time with the York Society? They did not mention you to me.”

Another strange expression came onto his face. “What business could I possibly have talking with the likes of them?” he asked me, and walked out, leaving me alone.

 

\--

Mrs Winthrop reappeared some minutes later, and upon seeing me alone at the kitchen table shook her head and tsked.

“My apologies, Mr Segundus,” she said, “Our John in’t what you’d call used to guests, nor any society beyond ours. And Mr Norrell’s, of course, but he…” she trailed off, and then shrugged, “No use dwelling, eh?”

She reminded me more of a nurse than a cook; I had been warned by friends of mine in the south that the people of the north were standoffish with people from different locales, as if they still believed their land fell under another’s rule, but Mrs Winthrop seemed entirely otherwise – a comfortable, cheerful, disarming kind of woman, and indeed I found myself disarmed.

“I would not have come, had I known there had been such a recent tragedy. I fear I am making myself disagreeable.”

She frowned at me and shook her head with such bemused solemnity that I found myself believing her.

“Damn that man,” she said, sitting down in the chair Mr Childermass had lately vacated, “What’s he said now? He’ll scare off half the moor with that tongue of his and no mistake.”

“I – Mr Childermass has said nothing, I have found him…perfectly agreeable,” I saw Mrs Winthrop was holding back a laugh at how I had said this, and we looked at each other knowingly for a moment, “I merely feel that my visit was not the most opportune.”

She reached across the table and patted my hand, which hardly helped in my seeing my old nurse in her. “You’ll find it’s the opposite, Mr Segundus. John could do with company, to liven him up. He’s not like Mr Norrell was; he fades if he has no-one of his own kind to speak to. Magicians, you know,” she added at my look of confusion.

“Mr Childermass is a magician?”

“Aye, but he won’t thank me for telling you so. He likes to think he’s mysterious, bless him,” she said as she stood again and went over to the stove.

I did not particularly wish to disturb her at her cooking, and she, much like her master, seemed perfectly happy with quiet. It struck me after a short while that it was pleasant to spend time in silence but in company; it made me shudder to think of Starecross and its rooms that echoed with so much voiceless history. Here, there was bustle; Mrs Winthrop at her cooking, and a few other servants that came in and out, sparing some gesture of welcome for me even in the face of their busyness. After what was probably around an hour, Mrs Winthrop pressed a cup of tea into my hands, and shortly after that dispatched the youngest maid to fetch the master. She returned with the news that he had shut himself in his study, and Mrs Winthrop shook her head at me, as if I were one of the household and not the stranger that I was. She sent the maid back up with a tray for him and brought two bowls to the table for herself and me; she brought over a slab of bread, too, which she split evenly between us.

“Does Mr Childermass often shut himself up in his study?” I asked, as I tore off a chunk of bread and dipped it in my stew.

She made a complicated expression I couldn’t even begin to interpret. “Aye,” she said after a moment, “He never used to, but he’s working on summat, and you know how scholars are.”

We shared a small laugh, and I spared a prayer of thanks that Mrs Winthrop had not yet been let loose on London. I was charmed by her despite my lack of inclination for the company of others, despite the difference in our backgrounds and our classes. I gathered enough confidence as I ate to tell her what I was thinking; that she would have been a most excellent lady of the house. This amused her more than I expected it to, but the amusement brightened her face and it struck me that her husband was a lucky man.

“You’ll give me airs, going on like that, Mr Segundus,” she said, without weight or reproof.

I blushed yet again, but I was saved from replying by the stableboy who came in from outside ‘all of a wuther’, as Mrs Winthrop put it.

“It’s snowing,” he said, which was rather obvious from the snow that was rapidly melting into his hair, and then went over to the stove to fetch himself a bowl of stew.

Mrs Winthrop went to open to kitchen door and have a look, and then she turned to me.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay the night, Mr Segundus. There’s no crossing the moor in this weather.”

For a moment, I thought she was joking, but she showed no sign of it. And so, this is how it came about that I spent what was supposed to be my first night at Starecross Grange at Hurtfew Abbey.

 

\--

 

Mrs Winthrop led me up the servant’s stairs, apologising as she did for how much of the house was closed off; there was only one room I could use, she said, and that was Mr Norrell’s old room, which hadn’t been properly aired for a long time. She had sent up one of the maids to light a fire and change the sheets for me, but it would likely be stuffy and dank. I hastened to reassure her that I didn’t mind at all and that I was thankful for her hospitality. She didn’t seem particularly convinced of this, but her apologising lost some steam as we reached the top of the stairs and turned into a long, darkly panelled corridor. My head spun strangely as we walked down it, and I was rather unsettled by how quickly the darkness made me lose my bearings. Not being a man easily lost, that alone would have spooked me; but the candle that Mrs Winthrop flickered as if there were a window open somewhere; once or twice the flame seemed to jump and twist on its wick. I had the strangest sensation that there should be another light somewhere, the moon through a window or another candle, perhaps the glow of fire beyond a door left ajar. It is not entirely clear to me now, but I recall I felt almost as if the light was coming from another place. I did not raise this with Mrs Winthrop; she had a certain unsettlement about her that I did not think would be aided by my confusion.

“Here we are,” she said eventually, opening the door for me and handing me the key, “You may want to keep it locked. Mr Childermass’s room is down the corridor and he won’t take kindly to seeing this one occupied, y’understand.”

I nodded and expressed my thanks; she waved me off and told me sternly to sleep well before giving me her candle and disappearing back down the corridor, leaving me alone outside the late master’s room. I stood there for a few moments before I rather crossly told myself I could not sleep in the hall, and then stepped into the room.

It was very small to say it was the master’s; the fireplace took up most of one wall, and book cases crowded in on the other walls, floor to ceiling and every shelf full. The bed was thin and small and rather austere, and there was a chest of drawers at its foot. A rug took up most of the floor, and this was the only real decoration besides a square and simply framed mirror above the fireplace.

I put the candle on the chest of drawers and got ready to sleep as best I could, but the bed once I got into it took a long time to warm even with the aid of a warming pan, and so I lay awake for longer than I had expected to.

I discovered as I tossed and turned that I had been wrong; there was one shelf, the one that was easiest to reach from the bed, that was not full. Each was neatly bound, with the initials _G.E.N._ and the year stamped upon the spine. Journals, I thought, and following the impulse of sleepy curiosity I reached for the latest one, marked _1800_.

_15 th June – Jonathan and I have made great advancements in the theory of summonings. Tomorrow we shall gather the needed ingredients and begin._

This was the last entry. The ink was slightly worn, as when one follows the words with one’s fingers again and again, and unbidden I thought of Mr Childermass, who was obviously still mourning, sitting on this bed and reading these words until he could recite them in his sleep.

I put that one down and reached instead for the earliest, marked _1789._ This one was not so neat as the first; the handwriting was larger, untidier, seemingly younger.

_2 nd February. Mr Lascelles visited today. He made me recite tax law in Latin. Uncle is still sick. _

_5 th of February. Ch. and I spent the day on the moors. I still do not like them but they are the Raven King’s so I try not to complain. Mr Lascelles threatened to give Ch. a whipping but Ch. hid in the stables so he could not find him._

I found that following the faded letters had brought tiredness to my eyes and I shut the journal on the unhappy young Mr Norrell, putting it back on the shelf and laying down on the thin pillow. I presumed _Ch._ was my landlord and unwitting host; Mr Lascelles, the elder of the two of that name whose portraits hung in Starecross. Who Jonathan was, I could not begin to fathom. I thought I would ask Mrs Winthrop in the morning, and with that I turned over and fell into an uneasy dream.

I do not recall it well, but I remember clouds of falling ravens and a darkness so thick I thought it would smother me, and two voices saying the most worrisome things about how I did not belong in their house, and what could they possibly do with me, and how could they send me back. I never saw either speaker, but in the confusion of my dream it seemed that the darkness itself was telling me these things. I woke from it suddenly and extremely disorientated, breathing raggedly and aching all over as if I had been thrown bodily against a wall. I sat up, the better to calm myself, but when I looked around the room the moonlight cast everything in a strangely saturated shade of blue and it seemed for a moment that I was still dreaming.

I heard, once, that one could not read in a dream and so I scrambled for a book; however, as I turned to better reach something in the mirror caught my eye.

In the mirror, I saw a figure. Like me, he sat on the bed though the bookcases behind him were bare. He was of an age with me, and of a height, and doubtless anyone who reads this will believe that I was seeing only my own reflection, and that the empty bookcases were nought but a trick of the light. Yet I knew, and know, with all certainty, that it was not myself I saw in the mirror. The man I saw had cropped hair and a small face; he was rounder than I, and paler of aspect, and wore a long nightshirt where I wore only my shirt. I was frozen; I can only remember what I saw, nothing of what I did or said or felt until the figure in the mirror stood and stepped towards me, opening his mouth to speak. I was terrified, then, that he would be able to reach through the mirror and that he would come to do me harm, and in my terror I am sorry to say that I screamed.

The man in the mirror vanished as soon as I did and there was the sound of running feet out in the corridor; I had decided not to lock the door, against Mrs Winthrop’s recommendation, and so Mr Childermass could charge into the room unhindered.

He looked wild, his long, ragged hair tumbling around his face, his shirt out of his breeches and his feet bare, as if I had disturbed him getting undressed. He didn’t see me at first, running straight to the mirror with a shouted _Gilbert!_ He hammered on the mirror hard enough that I thought it would break, and then when it would not yield he sank to the floor with a thick gasp that sounded like he was crushing a sob.

I hardly knew what to do. I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by speaking, or going over to him, but I could hear the tears in his breath and see them in the way his shoulders shook and it made me wish to comfort him, or to at least try.

However, in the end my choice was taken away. As soon as Mr Childermass had got himself back under control, he spoke.

“You saw him, didn’t you, Mr Segundus.”

“I don’t know,” I said, which at the time felt like the truth.

Mr Childermass sighed and stood, and said nothing more. He left the room, and closed the door behind him.

               

\--

 

In the end I did not ask Mrs Winthrop anything about the elusive Jonathan; she came to wake me soon after dawn and since I presumed the night’s excitement was all a dream I put it out of my mind and busied myself with preparing to leave.

Mrs Winthrop fussed but little, ensuring that I had both a bowl of porridge and a cup of coffee. She was busy – apparently the youngest maid had taken a funny turn in the night and required care. I offered, since I was headed that way anyway, to go on to Thorpe Underwood and send for a doctor; but Mrs Winthrop was of the opinion that young Lucy was not so ill as all that, that she was simply a sensitive girl and that funny turns were par for the course. I was uneasy, and was possessed by a need to see the young lady for myself; but I knew well enough that Mrs Winthrop probably had more medical experience than I, and so I ate my breakfast in solitude and silence. I was much unsettled by my dream and would have preferred company, but I made do. I was, to be frank, desirous of leaving as soon as I could, and if solitude aided in doing so then solitude I would accept.

However, the solitude with which I was quietly reacquainting myself was disturbed half way through my coffee, when Mr Childermass came into the kitchen. He caught my eye and then looked away, refusing to look at me again.

“I think it’s best you return to the Grange as soon as possible, Mr Segundus,” he said, in a thin, tight tone. He didn’t sound like he had slept, and when he fetched himself coffee he spilt it on the counter and swore.

“Of course,” I said, “I shall fetch my horse as soon as I have fin-”

“You mistake me. I shall take you back.”

“Well, I’m grateful I’m sure but you need not trouble yourself.”

“It would trouble me more to have a tenant freeze to death on my land.”

I had no answer for him then and he knew it; still, I was uneasy. It was then that I began to think of the night’s events as something that had truly happened, and I was frozen with fear that he would take the opportunity to ask me about it before I had made it clear in my own mind. I wished for nothing more at that moment than to leave Hurtfew immediately and to go back to the lodging-house in Lady-Peckitt’s Yard, where I would be safe to consult my books and seek an explanation.  

Needless to say, I did not; Mr Childermass returned a few minutes later, and I followed him out to the stables where he made it very obvious that he was refraining from commenting on my gracelessness with my horse.

I was, upon seeing the moor covered in snow, thankful that Mr Childermass had taken it upon himself to see me home. We rode mostly in silence, except for his directions and warnings; though most of his warnings were gestural rather than verbal. It bewildered me how he could find his way; the snow obliterated every feature of the landscape, but for the stubby trees which were so common on the moor as to be useless for navigation. And yet he could tell me exactly where I should direct my horse so that I did not end up neck deep in a snowdrift or fall through the ice into some pool or become stuck in some mire. At a few points he sighed to himself and took the reins for me, leading me like a child on a pony through the trickier places. I was grateful, however, that he did so – anything, I thought, would be better than being asked about the night before.

We reached Starecross in good time, though Mr Childermass left me before we were the whole way there. He turned around once we reached the crest of a low hill, told me that from there on the riding was easy and even such as I should manage it without trouble. He made some vaguely polite comments about me sending to Hurtfew should I need anything, and that I should come back later in the week if I still desired to look through his notes on Mr Norrell’s books. I said that I would, that I was obliged to him for his hospitality, and asked if he would also pass on my wishes that the youngest maid had a quick return to health to Mrs Winthrop. He nodded at this, and without leaving me time to return his goodbye went back across the moor at twice the speed he had brought me to the Grange.

It was a queer thing, but watching him I was suddenly possessed of the desire to follow him back. Hurtfew was a strange, not-quite kind of place, and yet I knew with some instinct I didn’t wish to question that I was supposed to be there. I had missed something crucial, I felt, and I had a strange sense of vertigo that led me to believe that whatever it was that I had missed had consequences that reached far beyond myself and Mr Childermass.

Perhaps it was cowardly of me, but I did not follow the instinct. I shook it off as a fancy caused by the moor, my dreamings and my hopes, and carried on to Starecross Grange.


	2. Chapter Two

I meant to rest a while once I returned to the Grange, but my mind refused to let me do so, and so I ended up wandering the house and the gardens in something of a scholarly haze. The gardens surprised me with their comparative snowlessness; it smattered the grass and flowers most delicately, the majority of the snow piled up in drifts against the walls as if it could sense the moor on the other side.

I could hear the servants in the house, but I never saw any except for the housekeeper, who appeared to have drawn the short straw in speaking to the new southern master. I am sure she is a pleasant woman, however she gives me the impression that she has not yet decided what to think of me but that it is unlikely to be favourable, and after the time I had had at Hurtfew I found it most unsettling.

I abandoned my wanderings in the garden after a half-hour, for while there was little snow it was still extremely cold, and decided I would explore the house more properly instead. I thought of finding more about the Lascelles, and why Starecross was no longer their own; I thought of hiding in the library and searching it in case of any books of magic that Mr Norrell had left behind. And yet I did neither of these things, but simply wandered the upper floors. It was not the most diverting thing, but I had begun to develop a headach and a general sense of lethargy that made it difficult for me to countenance any other occupation.

I discovered little but dust and furniture covered in sheets – I was only renting the first two floors of the smaller west wing, and so everywhere else had fallen into disuse – and in the face of such mundanity I was beginning to relax. However, as I walked further in the direction of the east wing, I felt something at the very edge of my mind, a scent or sound that I could not place nor understand. I tried to tell myself it was nothing but a symptom of the day and that I should leave, go back to the warm and fire-bright corner of the house and ask the housekeeper for something to ease the pounding in my temples. But I followed the feeling, chasing it down the corridor and through the twisting halls until I reached a large door deep in the east wing. I reached out to open the door and froze, feeling that if I opened it I would find myself walking into the blue-cast world of the man in the mirror. I told myself as frankly as I could not to be a fool and opened the door.

There was no blue-cast world behind it, no mirror gentlemen. Nothing, in fact, but dustsheets and dust. Still I felt myself pulled forward by the sensation I had chased, until I threw the dustsheet off the desk below the shuttered window and was struck by a fit of coughing so strong I was nearly forced to my knees.

Once I recovered, I tried the desk drawers. One was locked; one was not. I opened the second with some trouble, for though it was unlocked it was stiff, as if it were too full for the space allowed. When I finally convinced it to open, I found this was so; the drawer was full to overflowing with letters and scraps of paper covered in a scratchy writing that varied between seemingly new and years old. I was, at first, disappointed; I had chased a sensation for nothing but a pile of hastily drafted business correspondence. Or at least I thought so, until one fell out as I was closing the drawer and I saw the name _Jonathan_ scrawled at the bottom. I picked it up, intrigued, and found most of the letter scratched out but for a few words here and there, about _my time with you_ and something that the Jonathan in question would have found _most unbelievable, most impossible, in any other situation_. I made up my mind, upon reading that. Perhaps it was entirely reprehensible of me, but I wanted to find out more about this Jonathan, and perhaps in reading his papers I would be able to come to the bottom of Mr Norrell’s disappearance and what could make him carry off the country’s foremost magical library to lands unknown.

 

\--

 

I returned to my room with the drawer and its contents and put them under the bed where they would not be discovered by the maids when they came to clean, and was about to head downstairs to see when lunch would materialise when I caught sight of myself in the mirror and gave myself a terrible fright. For a moment I thought I saw the gentleman again; but it was merely that in my explorations I had encountered enough dust and cobwebs as to make me seem quite grey and insubstantial. I cleaned the dust from my hair as best I could with water from the ewer and changed my clothes, and in the interim the housekeeper came up to fetch me to dinner; I went as soon as I was ready, despite the ridiculousness of my hastily dried and hence exceedingly fluffy hair. I attempted to flatten it with my hands, but it refused to behave and I spent the entirety of lunch in a state of extreme embarrassment, which was exacerbated when I began to sneeze vociferously and found myself unable to stop. My plight moved even my housekeeper to sympathy, and she bustled me off to bed with instructions to rest and to drink the cocoa she would bring up.

I was, however, asleep before she ever brought it, and woke fleetingly to cough and mourn it standing there cold on my bedside table. I did not mourn too long, however, for I fell back asleep as soon as my lungs ceased vexing me and slept deeply enough for the dead.

 

\--

 

I woke blearily to a steady clicking noise, and much as I would have liked to fall back asleep without once having opened my eyes I knew the noise would follow me into sleep and terrify me with insect-filled nightmares if I didn’t discover its source.

I opened my eyes to find Mrs Winthrop sitting in a rocking chair near my bedside, knitting. At that point my greatest confusion was based on the fact that my room had previously had no rocking chair, and I wondered if the whole of my previous day had been part of my dream and I was still at Hurtfew.

I must have made a noise, for Mrs Winthrop spoke without once looking up from her knitting or pausing in the steady rhythm of her clicking needles.

“Zillah – th’ousekeeper – sent up to the house saying you were ill,” she said, in a quiet voice that nevertheless set my headach off again, “So I came down. There’s hot tea on the side.”

I struggled up onto one elbow and reached for the cup of tea that had replaced the cold cocoa.

“Mr Childermass sent you?”

She looked over at me and shook her head. “Lucy’s better and she needs practice in the kitchen, so I sent myself.”

“I thank you, ma’am,” I said, and succumbed to coughing.

She made some vague grumblings in which I could only make out the words ‘John’ ‘bloody fool’ and ‘in this weather’. Then she cleared her throat and bade me sit up properly and drink my tea. I did as she bid, if only because I didn’t desire to find myself on the receiving end of one of her stern looks.

It was easier to drink even if the movement made my head spin, but I felt a little better once I was half way through my tea. Mrs Winthrop shifted in her chair and I was suddenly possessed by a terror that she would leave now that I was awake, so I cast around foggily for something to say.

“Who’s Jonathan, Mrs Winthrop?”

She frowned, and finally paused in her infernal clicking. “Why do you ask?”

“Last night, I-” I could not find the words to finish my sentence without incriminating myself, but the look on her face suggested she understood me anyway.

“His name was Jonathan Strange,” she said, and I could not quite work out her tone. There was bitterness there, and a little anger, but also a great deal of sorrow, “He went missing when Mr Norrell did.”

“Was he-” I struggled, not even knowing what I was asking, “Was he a small man? My height, with short hair and-” I broke off, for she was already shaking her head.

“That’s Mr Norrell you’ve confused him with. There’s no portrait of Mr Strange at the Abb-” she completely froze, and stared at me, “There’s no portrait of Mr Norrell at the Abbey either,” she said, “John took it down months ago. How did you-”

“I saw him in the mirror,” I said, and she fell back in her chair with a look of enough shock that I was inclined to fetch her a cup of tea as if I were not the invalid.

Then she ran a hand across her face and sat up, looking at me seriously. “Soon as you’re well enough to ride, you have to tell John. To know that someone else has seen him – someone other than Lucy, someone he’d believe-” she broke herself off yet again, then put her knitting aside and stood up, pacing up and down beside my bed.

I wanted to comfort her; I had heard a very slight shake in her voice, and the way she was avoiding my eyes now suggested to me that she was trying not to let me know my revelation had brought her to tears.

“I told him,” she muttered, seemingly to herself, “I _told_ him they’d done summat and got ‘mselves trapped somewhere, I _told_ him, did he listen? Bloody stupid bastard-”

I must have made a startled noise at her unexpected language, for she looked up and apologised. She sat heavily back down in the rocking chair and groaned.

“I’m sorry, Mr Segundus. You’re ill, I should let you sleep, rather than grumbling to you about things years past.”

“But I am awake now,” I said, “And I shall be bored if you leave.” I knew well that I sounded petulant; but if she reminded me of a nurse, perhaps the opposite would work to my advantage.

“You want me to entertain you with stories of years past?” There was an incredulousness to her voice that suggested there was a right and wrong answer to this question, and that if I answered wrongly her opinion of me would plummet.

“Not…not entertain,” I said after a moment, “Simply that – that I wish to understand.”

She looked at me for a long moment, until she appeared satisfied that I was being truthful.

Then she settled back in her chair and picked up her knitting once again. “What is it you want to understand?”

I thought about it, gulping down the rest of my tea and then holding the cup in both hands as something to keep me from fidgeting.

“I would – if it is not too much trouble – I would like to know why Mr Norrell and Mr Strange disappeared.”

She laughed gently. “You’ve only gone and chosen the longest story in the whole of Yorkshire, if I’m to tell it right.”

I began to take it back, but she shook her head.

“I don’t know all of it,” she said, “Not the most pertinent parts. But if you’re to tell John about seeing Mr Norrell it’s probably better I tell you what I do know.”

“I would appreciate that, Mrs Winthrop.”

“Hannah,” she said, “If I’m telling you the story you may as well call me by my name.”

“Hannah,” I echoed, and smiled.

 

\--

 

And so she began. I shall copy it here with only some condensing, for clarity – but I shall attempt to write it just how she told it to me.

 

\--

 

Mr Norrell was not always of Hurtfew Abbey – it was his grandfather built it, old Mr Earnshaw, but his daughter married a man Mr Earnshaw disapproved of and so when he died the house went to Mr Haythornthwaite, Mr Earnshaw’s nephew and Mrs Norrell’s cousin. Not so long after that, Mrs Norrell and her husband both took ill and died, and so Mr Norrell came to Hurtfew, Mr Haythornthwaite being his only family as could afford to take him. I came on staff around then – I think Mr Haythornthwaite thought it best Mr Norrell had someone his own age around the place, even if that were only a chambermaid.

He was a very small, very sickly young lad, and I don’t think Mr Haythornthwaite had much in the way of paternal instinct, so they mostly let one another alone for the first few months. I only really recall it because it was all so quiet, then. Mr Haythornthwaite had business in York often, so most of the time it was just Gilbert and us servants in the house – it worried the master, that, Gilbert being too young for school and being left alone so much in the house, and I figure that was what he were thinking this one particular day. He’d gone to York as he usually did, and none of us were missing him too much – Gilbert had discovered the joys of the library, and I was too busy missing my own ma to miss the master as didn’t even know my name yet. But he took a lot longer than he usually would, near a week for a trip that wouldn’t even take three days, and by the sundown on the fifth day we were all of us beginning to worry. The housekeeper had sent Gilbert to bed at his usual hour, but the worry kept him awake, and around ten – I couldn’t sleep either – I found him on the stairs, and sat with him since he looked like he needed it.

We sat there till midnight, and we were almost asleep on each other’s shoulders when Mr Haythornthwaite finally came rattling up the lane in his carriage and woke us with the noise. Mr Norrell jumped up and I think, were he a more dramatic child, he would have thrown himself at Mr Haythornthwaite when he came through the door. It’s as well he didn’t – for Mr Haythornthwaite didn’t come in alone.

Gilbert realised before I did what was bulking out the folds of Mr Haythornthwaite’s coat, and gasped in shock – which was probably the strongest reaction I’d seen from him in the whole six months I’d known him – just as a tiny scrap of a boy emerged from the coat. He was ragged and filthy, and he was tiny enough that at first I thought he was a good bit younger than the two of us, only just out of babyhood – but he had a cleverness in his eyes that near frightened me with its ferocity.

“This is John, Gilbert,” Mr Haythornthwaite said, “He’s to stay here a while.”

Neither of us particularly knew what to do, but Gilbert had just enough tired boldness to step forward and shake the child’s hand; I kept close to him, a little worried as I was, and heard the boy quietly introduce himself as Childermass, contrary to Mr Haythornthwaite’s introduction. When I heard him speak I realised he was the same age as Gilbert and myself, for despite his shyness he spoke clearly and evenly.

Mr Haythornthwaite took over; “This is my nephew Gilbert, John,” he said, the _John_ pointed, “And the young lady is-” he stopped, apparently remembering he had never bothered to ask me my name.

“Hannah,” I said, and Mr Haythornthwaite nodded.

“Hannah, one of our maids,” he finished.

During the introductions John had pulled himself entirely away from Mr Haythornthwaite, and had folded his arms across his chest. He looked at us both with a gaze that went through us, an analysing look that I found worrying. I was convinced we were going to come up lacking in his estimation, which – since I was a conceited child – I took offence to. But even then I understood that it would do him no good to treat him as less than the guest he was, and so when Mr Haythornthwaite told us that he was going to the parlour and to bugger off to bed I took John up to the part of the house where Gilbert’s room was and installed him in the room next door. Gilbert seemed as though he was about to ask if John could sleep in his room, rather than having the next one; I supposed then it would give me less work to do when I was ready to drop myself, and with a little ineffectual help from Gilbert I carried a couple of extra blankets up from the linen cupboard and let John and Gilbert sort them out between them while I filled the warming pan and banked the fire. It seemed to me a job well done – I didn’t have to light a fire in the next room and come back a little later to bank it once the room was warmed, nor track down John a second warming pan. I wasn’t even sure they’d need the one, but Gilbert was nesh and John tiny, so better safe than not.

John thanked me just as I was leaving to go back to my own bed, and Gilbert followed suit with a little more confidence than I’d ever heard from him. I couldn’t at the time put my finger on why that made me smile, but it did. Didn’t make up for my bed being cold when I got back to it, though.

 

\--

 

All her talk of warm beds and late nights had sent me almost to sleep. She said she would go and leave me in peace; I tried to stop her, but she would have none of it, and so I fell once again into a troubled sleep full of ravens and encroaching darknesses and voices I did not understand.

 

\--

 

I woke up in the middle of the night, hazy-headed and coughing, and could not return to sleep. Somewhere in the house a grandfather clock chimed out three o’clock, and someone had obviously forgotten to close my curtains, for the moon shone in heavy and full. This was pure, crisp moonlight, not the strange blue-cast light of Hurtfew, and it was almost comforting. It was enough to make me think I was elsewhere, at York or Oxford, reading through the night with a candle and the moon, and that reminded me of the letters I had found the day before. I managed to contort myself into being able to fetch a handful without leaving the warmth of my bed, and once I had fetched them I settled back against my pillows and headboard, paused long enough to cough, and then laid them out on my bed in date order. It was possibly a bad idea, doing this in the moonlight while I was ill with cold, but sleepless as I was I had much enthusiasm and little patience. My handful consisted of six letters and one page copied from a book. Four of the letters were in Mr Norrell’s neat hand, and two were drafts written in the same expansive, looping hand as that which had copied the page. I reached for the earliest of Mr Norrell’s letters, and found it not addressed to Starecross Grange as I had expected but to a place called Ashfair, in Shropshire. At first, it seemed friendly but dull, and I could not fathom why Mr Strange had kept it – it was merely enquiries after Mr Strange’s health and that of the young lady who had lately refused him, and a few words on the state of things in this corner of Yorkshire, which was of little interest to me as I knew none of the people and places he discussed. But as I progressed through the letter – growing more tired, more achy, and more regretful – it became obvious that there was something more at work. The questions and statements, while retaining their dry flavour, became more personal, and the tone began to be more lively. I could not quite fathom it – either I was too tired, or the true meaning of the words lay between the lines. Nevertheless, it spoke of a closeness between the two men that surprised me – at the least a deep friendship, though I felt justified in hearing a relationship of an altogether different kind in those words. Perhaps in my haziness I was misreading, or projecting, but it remains that that was my initial assessment of Mr Strange and Mr Norrell, and men of my ilk cannot afford ever to be far wrong.

I moved on to one of Mr Strange’s drafts, found it addressed to his father and mostly scribbled-out, and set it aside. The second of Mr Strange’s drafts looked to be more promising at first, since it was addressed _Gilbert_ ; but it was full of mathematics and Latin, neither of which I felt I could handle at gone-three on a winter’s morning when I was full of cold, and so I set that one aside as well.

Mr Norrell’s second letter was similarly full of mathematics and Latin, but I spotted a few Aureates’ names in there as I scanned it and so attempted to plough through. I came to the conclusion, upon making it through half the page, that I would have done far better with it had I read the texts Mr Norrell was discussing in that dryly enthusiastic way of his, and if I had had the rest of the letters on hand, on both sides. As I had neither the books nor the letters I made do and surmised that they had been discussing the theory of mirror-travel and that Mr Norrell had a great many feelings on the necessity of silver in such endeavours, which it appeared Mr Strange did not share.  

I reflected somewhat fancifully that it was just as well this discussion was being conducted via letter, for in person I imagine it could easily become very heated. I amused myself imagining the small and fussy Mr Norrell’s language slowly becoming coarser as Mr Strange failed to be moved on the subject of silver and mirrors, and somewhere in this imagining I must have fallen asleep, for I awoke to the mid-morning sun shining in my face, a bed covered in crumpled papers and Hannah looking at me with her eyebrow raised and her mouth twitching as if she were trying not to laugh.

“Rifling through private correspondence are we now, Mr Segundus?”

I could not think of a single thing to say, and so I said nothing. 

She shook her head and moved a few letters out of the way so she could lay the tray she was carrying down on my bed.

“Your private activities are your own business, but had I known my tale telling was inadequate, well…”

It took me a very spluttery few moments to realise she was teasing, and in this time she poured me a cup of tea and pushed it into my hands. There was a second cup on the tray, tucked in beside a plate of toast and jostling with butter in a shallow dish, and she poured tea for herself before settling back in the rocking chair.

“I imagine you can butter your own toast,” she said.

I nodded, relieved, for I do not much like being fussed as if I cannot take care of myself.

“And apparently you can tell your own stories-”

“Mrs Winthrop, please.”

She took a sip of tea and raised her eyebrows in a mock-innocent fashion.

I steeled myself for pleasantries, since she seemed more interested in making pointed expressions than speaking to me.

“I hope all is well at Hurtfew?”

“Of course not. It all fell apart without me. But seeing as I think John could do with being made come out of his study, I can’t say I think that was a bad thing.”

We paused simultaneously to drink our tea, and then I spoke again.

“Mr Strange and Mr Norrell do not tell a tale near as well as you.”

“Obviously. They’re both too caught up in magic and each other to have the first idea of anything or anyone.”

“And you have never been caught up enough in anything to lose your skill with a story?”

“Oh, I would not be so bold. I certainly stopped paying attention for a few months while I was courting.”

I laughed, and a look of satisfaction came onto her face. Then she clicked her fingers at me. “Get that toast ate before it goes too cold, else it’ll do you no good.”

I did as she bid me, thinking the army had lost the chance of a very good sergeant in Hannah Winthrop when it decided only to admit men, and once I had buttered a piece of cool toast to her satisfaction she picked up her tale once more.

 

\--

 

I can’t say that Mr Haythornthwaite doted on John; he was not the doting kind. Yet he seemed to pay attention to him, and in consequence Gilbert, in a way he had never before payed attention to any but his money lender and his liquor cabinet. They did not seek him out to mither, or think him necessary in their day, but he made a point of eating with them at least twice a week, and greeting them when he got back from business.

I think perhaps he thought routine would settle John, who was a jumpy young lad, but it never did. Mr Haythornthwaite insisted that John be moved into his own room, and I think the memory of that always undid the goodwill of Mr Haythornthwaite’s other gestures in John’s mind. And it was always Gilbert who came and woke me in the middle of the night to say that John was having a nightmare, could I help? It was always Gilbert that fetched me and always me he fetched, and so it was only ever the two of us that soothed John out of his nightmares or came to find him when he’d lost himself sleepwalking in Hurtfew’s corridors. I cannot but think taking dinner with Mr Haythornthwaite at the table in the dining room – a table as old as the original Abbey and that once sat twenty or more, so I’ve been told – made John more uncomfortable, rather than less.

It hardly took many leaps of logic, even for a nine-year-old girl such as I was, to realise that John was a slum-child, probably having grown up in those areas of York stuffed up to the gills with people, and Hurtfew’s rooms echoed with their emptiness.

But John did settle, eventually, gaining weight under the supervision of the cook and shooting up like a beanstalk in no time; Gilbert was quietly disgruntled, I think, that he only had a few months of being the taller of the two.

He was strong enough, once summer arrived, that Mr Haythorntwaite could no longer find a reasonable excuse to keep him within the walls of Hurtfew. The cook told me worrisome things about how Gilbert and John would never spend time together once John took to wandering the moors, since Gilbert hated the outside with a passion the outpourings of which I was very familiar with, but that never came to pass.

The very first day John was allowed out on the moor, I ran into him by the garden gate dragging Gilbert by the sleeve. Gilbert had a small parcel of books under one arm and a put-upon expression on his face, but he wasn’t resisting John’s tugging in the slightest.

“Hannah!” John said, very brightly, upon seeing me.

I looked from him to Gilbert and back again, bemused.

“He wants me to show him Penistone Crags,” Gilbert said, “Could you bring our lunch up- _John!”_

John, who had grown bored of the logistics of mealtimes, had resumed tugging Gilbert onwards, to which Gilbert took offence.

I said I would and shooed them off, full of smugness that I had been right and that not even the moor could make John and Gilbert pull away from each other.

When I took their lunch up to the Crags, I found Gilbert sitting on his coat under the nearest tree, reading and making notes just as he would have in Hurtfew, while John was standing on the highest rock and glaring at the horizon as if it had personally offended him. Still, I got the sense that they, while not talking to each other and appearing to do very disparate things, they were doing them companionably, and both would have missed the other were they alone. Not wishing to disturb them, I laid the lunch basket on the ground near Gilbert, who never once looked up from his book, and left.

 

\--

 

This became their routine; they would go out on the moor in the morning, sometimes taking lunch and sometimes not, and stay there until I was forced to fetch them in for tea. Gilbert always took books, and when I came to get them the two were always discussing them loudly and at great length. Mr Haythornthwaite didn’t see them most evenings, which I don’t think bothered any of them. It wasn’t the separation, at any rate, for Mr Haythornthwaite was never anything but distantly paternal once he’d settled into having both boys at the house. He did try to be doting, at first, but it wasn’t in his nature. Please do not take me to mean he did not love them – he did, in his way. There were some in town who, once John was understood to be a fixture, said that an education was wasted on such a boy, that even the servants’ quarters were too good for him, that Mr Haythornthwaite had set himself up for trouble and no mistake. He was friends with the loudest of the local dissenters, Mr Lascelles of Starecross – his picture hangs downstairs, but it’s hardly the best likeness – but that was not to say Mr Haythornthwaite ever listened. I heard them in the library once, arguing over it. Mr Lascelles was loud in his fighting of his corner, but Mr Haythornthwaite was louder, and a bigger man to boot. I didn’t stay long enough to know for sure, but if you’d told me that Mr Lascelles left that day with a black eye I would have believed you.

The next morning, he called John into his study. It was the first time he’d done so, with either of them, and as I recall John – who was by this time strong on summer air, and mouthy as they came – fair shaking in his boots. Soon as I told him he was wanted he began fussing – even attempted to tie a cravat around his neck, which he made a right pig’s ear of – but I made him settle for buttoning his shirt and putting shoes on. Fool boy was going around with cravats and coats and hadn’t even got shoes and stockings on. Anyroad I got him to the study a little neater than I found him, and Mr Haythornthwaite opened the door to him before we’d even knocked. John wouldn’t let go of my hand, and Mr Haythornthwaite must had seen how scared John was, for he didn’t tell me to wait outside, and let me come in. He’d learnt my name by now, and he smiled at me in a not-quite-focused way that managed to relax both me and John enough that John let go of my hand.

“There are some,” Mr Haythornthwaite started as soon as he closed the door behind us, “That refuse to see you for who you are. I knew when I brought you here that they would, and you’re a smart enough boy to know it yourself. They don’t thank me for bringing you here, and they don’t see you as having potential, which I do.”

He stopped then, pacing a bit in a way that reminded me of John’s fussing and backwardsing and forwardsing earlier. I smiled, but crushed it before either of them saw.

“What I mean to say, John, is that you have a place here. It will be yours and Gilbert’s equally when I am gone, and I – I wish for you to consider – to know that I consider you – as much a Haythornthwaite as any of my own blood.”

This pronouncement seemed to take it out of him; he had sat heavily back down in his chair as he spoke, and was looking at John with a wide eyed and vaguely worried expression.

John was stock-still beside me, and seemed hardly to be breathing. I reached across and squeezed his hand, which seemed to pull him out of whatever frozen moment he had caught himself in.

“Sir,” he started, sounding smaller and yet somehow more defiant than I had ever heard him, “Thank you, sir. I – I appreciate it. But I’m a Childermass, sir. I’ll never be ought else than that.”

Mr Haythornthwaite nodded. “I understand that, I do. So long as you know that you belong here.”

 

\--

 

We did well enough for some time after that – summer went and came again and we carried on much as we always had, John and Gilbert and I. But John and Gilbert were coming up quickly on school-aged, and Mr Haythornthwaite began to receive letters with fancy letterheads and read them pensively. Mr Lascelles, for the first time, returned to Hurtfew to speak to him. A few months of this infected the boys with its tension, and they became through self-defence even closer than before. You never saw one without the other, not once.

It was a rapidly darkening day in early August when Mr Haythornthwaite left for York; he went in the carriage, which he only ever did when he had to meet with someone liable to be impressed by it.  Gilbert and John – it was difficult in those days to find a moment when one could refer to them separately – proved themselves a little worried by this, setting themselves up in the library with blankets and cocoa and jam on toast that evening to wait up for his return. I sat with them after my chores were done and fell asleep under one of the blankets tucked against John’s shoulder, Gilbert on his other side. I remember absently wondering if Mr Haythornthwaite was going to return with another stray, but fell asleep before I could say anything to the boys.

I woke up in my own bed a little after dawn to the servants’ quarters buzzing with some news or other, though no one would tell me anything and it was only when I ran into John in the garden that I found out what had happened.

He was sitting on the stone bench by the garden wall, a book on his knee. He wasn’t looking at it – he was staring instead at the trailing ivy that was less than a quarter inch from his toe.

“John?”

He glanced up and then shifted over so that I could sit next to him.

He looked, for want of a better word, bruised; it was obvious he hadn’t slept, and he was holding himself with a gingerness that worried me.

“What’s up wi’ thee?” I asked, gently.

“Gilbert has a place at school.”

The words sounded kicked out of him and I reached out to take his hand. He turned his hand over to link his fingers through mine, squeezing.

“You haven’t?”

“Wouldn’t take me.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

He shrugged easily enough, but the gingerness in him gave way to a trembling and I hugged him, pulling him about to rest his head on my shoulder.

“He doesn’t want to go.”

“Of course not.”

He breathed out, and I could feel his breath shaking against my neck. I kept expecting him to cry, but he never did, not in the whole twenty minutes we sat there together. It was the housekeeper that came to find us, not Gilbert like I expected, and fetched us in for something to eat. She was never that fond of John, nor much fond of anyone for that matter, but she was softer spoken with him then than I’d ever heard her before or since. I suppose the sight of a near tearful ten-year-old boy would be enough to soften anyone.

In fact, I saw neither hide nor hair of Gilbert all that day, though I heard him arguing with his uncle just before tea was to be served and saw Mr Haythornthwaite afterwards, looking particularly haggard and slightly tremulous himself. Gilbert, he told me, had gone early to bed. I thought then that there would be no sign of John all evening, but he came down to tea himself without anyone sent to fetch him.

The two sat in careful silence, picking at their roast beef, and that, in a strange way, seemed the end of it. I felt that if John had pushed at that moment, Mr Haythornthwaite would have crumbled. John knew that too; it was clear on his face. But he didn’t say a word.

 

\--

 

The month or so that had to pass before Gilbert started at school was a queer one; the boys spent most of every day together, same as always, but they seemed a little off with each other, a little uneasy. Even so there was a kind of intensity to everything they did, a ferocious bright-eyedness of activity as if they had decided that no school would taint what they did. I’m certain we all saw the irony of it.

But August passed, intense as it was, and September came around in the most auspicious way it could, all soft sunshine and good harvest. They had to leave the day before he was due to start, Gilbert and Mr Haythornthwaite, and those servants as had nought to do turned up to see them off. I, being a chambermaid as much as a playmate, was standing on the main steps between the butler and the cook and couldn’t really see much; still, from Gilbert’s face I could see that John was nowhere amongst us.


	3. Chapter Three

She left it there for the moment, taking the tray from my lap and saying that she would come back later if she could.

“You’re to rest,” she said, “No more reading of other men’s correspondence. Sleep.”

I had not realised until that moment that I was terribly tired, and tucked myself below the sheets as she took the papers from my bedclothes with her free hand and put them back in the drawer.

“If you’re expecting no-one to find it under your bed then you underestimate the rigour of housemaids, Mr Segundus,” she said to my querying noise.

“John,” I said.

“Hm?”

“My name’s John.”

This amused her, and she left still snickering to herself.

I could hear her going downstairs, and then heard her voice as she spoke to one of the servants, but it was distant, on a different level to the quiet that had fallen over my room.

I curled myself up under the sheets, succumbed to tiredness, and slept.

 

\--

 

As much as I was wary of returning to Hurtfew, it was becoming preferable to waking up unwell in my bed. I told myself as I blinked awake that it could hardly be long now; I was not so sick as all that. I woke alone to silence and stillness, my room lit by sunlight and my ears full of birdsong. At the time I was cross that Hannah wasn't there to greet me when I woke – illness makes me objectionable, I admit. As she wasn’t, I attempted to fall back asleep, but i was thwarted by my respiratory system and decided to get up; I struggled into my dressing gown and went downstairs in search of some kind of breakfast.

Zillah was puttering about the kitchen when I got there, and jumped when she saw me. I apologised, finding my voice hoarse and breathy – she fussed me into sitting down and made me a cup of tea. It was mildly comfortable, sitting there in the early morning in a warm kitchen with a cup of tea in my hands, but it still wasn’t exactly what I hoped for from my holiday. Zillah was also a little stiff, and after Hannah she seemed cold – not any fault of hers, I knew that well, but I am not easy with people and it is particularly difficult when with someone who is also uneasy with people. Even so, it was pleasant enough to be going on with.

“Snow’s cleared up, sir,” she said when I was halfway through my tea. I believe I made some noise of acknowledgement, but she was looking at me as if there was more to her statement than simple observation.

I made a ‘hm’ kind of noise in question.

“Appen you might be going up t’ th’ Abbey today, sir.”

I sneezed and shook my head. “I think not, Zillah, thank you.”

“Only Mrs Winthrop were saying just yesterday that she wouldn’t’ve thought you’d be lasting much longer here, with you needing company and all.”

I confess I may have spluttered at this. “I fear I may make myself worse, should I travel.”

Zillah tipped her head in a conceding of the point. “Well, sir, should heal up soon.”

“I do hope so,” I said, and a few minutes passed in silence. Zillah began to look as if she was desirous of moving, though seemed unwilling to take her leave of me first; to save her anxiety, I stood.

“I feel I should return to rest,” I said, and left.

 

\--

 

I returned, but did not sleep. A headache had grown behind my temples while I was not watching, and the pain of it made sleep difficult – reading, too, proved impossible. The words of one of Jonathan Strange’s drafted letters swam most objectionably before me and I had to put it down in order to spare myself the frustration. I tossed and turned; I got up and dressed as far as my breeches and shirt and stomped around my room in bare feet. I soon became dizzy and chilled, and threw my dressing gown back on over the top of my shirt. The fabrics colluded together to thwart me; it was, after just a few minutes, unpleasantly stuffy and sticky. I considered having Zillah send a maid up to light the fire and then decided against it. They would have enough to do – I would not bother them. Besides, I didn’t want them to wonder why I had a drawerful of correspondence under my bed. I did wonder, however, at how little I had been disturbed. I supposed that the master being permanently resident in his room did make it difficult for the maids to do their duties, and perhaps if they were shy it was more so. It was not that I minded; it was that my friends knew of my tendency to be fiercely protective of my privacy and had warned me that it would be difficult to adjust to an army of maids traipsing in and out.

I should write to Mr Honeyfoot, I thought; I shrugged off my dressing gown and sat at the desk, pulling a sheet of paper toward me. I had no sooner began than my headache forbade me continue. I left the letter there, barely started, and threw myself down on the bed in the most petulant manner I had managed since I was a child of three.

Upon which moment, Hannah walked in.

“Well,” she said, looking me up and down and raising an eyebrow, “Zillah did say you were looking restless.”

“I cannot countenance another day of this, Hannah,” I said from my position on the bed, not yet conscious of its inappropriateness, “I cannot think! I cannot read, nor write – I cannot even stand for ten minutes together!”

Her eyebrow went down. “Well, sit yourself down properly and I’ll continue my story, how’s that?”

I sat up and shuffled back to sit against the headboard; I realised as I did that my feet were bare, that I was only just dressed, and blushed a ferocious red.

Hannah laughed, a quick and almost bitter little noise. “I am not scandalised by bare feet. You will remember that I’ve seen you in your nightclothes for three days in a row.”

“But your husband-”

“There are none in this corner of Yorkshire who would believe me or my virtue compromised by a man in bare feet, spouse included,” she said, and sat herself down in the chair. She had with her a large bag, and pulled from it an amount of shapeless fabric which she set about mending, “May I continue my tale?”

“Of course. Please do.”

 

\--

 

We received letters from York regularly. One a week from Gilbert for Mr Haythornthwaite, one a week from Gilbert for John and myself, and two a week for John alone, along with one a month from the headmaster with occasional input from the other teachers. The highlights of this latter letter Mr Haythornthwaite would read aloud at the dinner table for John to hear, which John would later relay to me.

We learnt from these that Gilbert was proving superb at history and English, very good and fast improving at Latin and Greek, reasonable at arithmetic, and decent at art in which he showed great interest and potential if not passion. We learnt also that some of the teachers were worried by his introversion and his lack of willingness to try to get along with the other boys.

We learnt from Gilbert’s own letters that he was aggravated with the pace of his lessons – _I have known this for years! In Uncle’s library I would have progressed at three times this rate!_ – that languages fascinated him almost, but not quite, as much as the magical history lessons he had once a week, and that he was most awfully bullied by the other boys.

He told us that he would not tell his uncle of this; that his uncle had warned him that young boys could be boisterous and unconsciously cruel, especially so in the face of Gilbert’s enviable intelligence, but that a month or so of school would cure them of it. Hearing this made John restless; he would start to pace as soon as he heard of what the other boys had done, and it took a lot of talking down for him not to run to Mr Haythornthwaite and kick up a fuss right then and there.

“If I were there they would never dare,” John would always start, and I would agree but then point out that he would have been expelled for breaking the jaws of half the boys in school.

“With good reason,” he’d say, but he would deflate from there and sit on the windowsill, looking small and pensive.

 

\--

 

It was mid-November when Mr Haythornthwaite announced at the dinner table that he had reached the end of his wits.

“If only everyone announced it so,” John said, “Bedlam would be full to bursting in days.”

Mr Haythornthwaite paused, shocked, and then burst out laughing. “I would tell you to be careful of that tongue, but I fear there would be no way of making you listen.”

John very innocently asked him if he would pass the dish of potatoes. 

“I mean that I have reached the end of my wits with Gilbert’s housemaster,” he said, doing as John asked, “Upon research, I discovered that he may be more sympathetic to your plight than the headmaster, and have these past two months been trying to convince him to admit you in the Spring.”

 John froze, his cutlery falling from his slack grasp and clattering onto his plate.

“I am very sorry to say he would not be convinced. It is most unjust of him, and I have told him so.”

“Why-” John started, and stopped.

“Why would he not accept you?”

John nodded.

“I am told it would create a scandal the school cannot afford.”

John seemed to accept this easily enough, and he quietly thanked Mr Haythornthwaite for trying. But that night, he paced up and down any corridor long enough to burn off a bit of his anger, and railed in my direction upon every injustice ever visited upon him.

I thought, for a few moments, that he would run off to York and find Gilbert himself, that he would sneak into the school and pick up the learning without their knowing, that he would take Gilbert by the hand and run off to freedom wherever he could find it.

But it was a howling night, and he didn’t even venture as far as the kitchen door.

 

\--

 

“That,” I said, “Was terribly unfair.”

Hannah gave me a look as if to say that this was the most ridiculously obvious thing I had come out with yet, and I blushed but continued, “No person should be denied the education they desire! On any grounds! Not, not age or sex or race or money. It cannot be fair to continue to do this the way we always have, simply because we always have. It cannot, and if there is anything I can ever do to begin to redress the balance, then I hope that I would do it.”

I realised, from the look on her face, that I had rather gone on, and blushed hotter.

“Fancy yourself a schoolmaster, John?”

“Well, I – I had not thought of it before now. But I have tutored boys before and I believe I have the temperament.”

“I believe I would agree with you.”

“Oh?”

“Well, this is the first time I’ve seen you lively.”

I cleared my throat and looked bashfully at my knees.

“Would you like me to carry on?”

“Please.”

 

\--

 

After that, however, John settled; he took to reading in the library, which he had almost entirely avoided since Gilbert left for school, and scraped an education that way. Mr Haythornthwaite checked on his progress at the end of every week, over Sunday lunch. The letters from Gilbert continued, and gradually it became a kind of normality.

But autumn faded into winter and Christmas arrived almost too quickly to be believed, and with it brought Gilbert back.

He returned on a clean, crisp, still day about a week before Christmas, when no snow lingered on the moor but the wind bit with wolven teeth, and he barely spared a glance for those of us on the steps to welcome him before rushing inside to the fire.

It was on the tip of my tongue to accuse him of neshness, but when we’d all filed into the parlour – Mr Haythornthwaite, John, the butler, the cook, the coachman and myself – we could see what we hadn’t before – that he was thinner than when he had left us, and that he was of a most terrible colour. It was John who started forward first, John who hugged him close and tutted over his chill, but we all saw the tired redness of Gilbert’s eyes, and the over-delicate way he held himself.

“Right, that’s it,” Mr Haythornthwaite said, in the sharpest, darkest tone I had heard from him since his argument with Mr Lascelles.

John and Gilbert started apart, Gilbert flinching and John scowling; but Mr Haythornthwaite wasn’t looking at them – he had charged out of the parlour, and was already halfway to his study.

“Sir?” It was the coachman that called out, the bravest of all of us, and the only one barring John who was secure enough in his position to question the master.

“I’m writing to the school,” Mr Haythornthwaite shouted, and the study door slammed.

 

\--

 

Christmas itself was quiet; every year, the house received several invitations to dine with the other families of repute in the area, including the Lascelleses, and every year Mr Haythornthwaite delicately refused, inferring that Easter would carry with it an invitation in the opposite direction -  though it never did. At least in the matter of other people, he was very much like his wards.

Instead of three or four local families crowded around the dining table, Christmas loosened the boundaries between us all and the servants sat at the table with the family. Perhaps it sounds too idyllic to be believed, but I was crowded in by John and Gilbert, and Mr Haythornthwaite was deeply engrossed in a slightly too-loud conversation on the matter of horses with the groomsman, the butler – whose part in the discussion was apparently justified by his cousin having once spent a few weeks attempting to train horses in Newcastle - and the coachman. Gilbert looked tired, but happier, and kept half falling asleep against John’s shoulder; Mr Haythornthwaite smiled to see it, and after the meal was over, in a rare showing of gentleness, carried Gilbert to bed himself.

 

\--

 

After Christmas, a reply came from the school, and Mr Haythornthwaite came into the library in the middle of the morning to inform the boys that Gilbert would not be attending come the new term. For the first time since he returned, Gilbert smiled, and leaned sideways to rest himself against John’s shoulder.

“That will be simpler for you both, won’t it?” Mr Haythornthwaite said, tensely, and in hindsight I believe it was less a statement and more a question.

He and John shared a glance, and though it seemed impossible to me then, I’m sure now that it was the approval in John’s eyes that made Mr Haythornthwaite relax.

But spring still came with its difficulties. As April faded out, Mr Haythornthwaite fell ill with ‘flu; at that time he was a hearty man, and the doctor when he finally arrived from York said that he would have very little trouble recovering. But the flu was followed by a short, sharp bout of pneumonia, and the cough that gave him never quite left him.

Mr Haythornthwaite had presumed that he could tutor Gilbert and John well enough; but when the ‘flu got the better of him, he was forced to ask Mr Lascelles to find someone in Thorpe Underwood  who could take them on.

Mr Lascelles was entirely the wrong man to entrust with this; the vicar was already tutoring his son, who was of an age with John and Gilbert, and Mr Lascelles had no desire for his son’s education to suffer because the vicar suddenly could not attend to the younger Lascelles’ every difficulty.

He tried, at first, to pass Mr Haythornthwaite off with a young man desiring an income to augment his salary as junior clerk. John told; Mr Haythornthwaite sacked the lad. Lascelles tried, instead, to convince the vicar of the parish on the other side of the moor to come and teach the boys, but that vicar was elderly, and would not be prevailed upon to ride the required three hours a day. Finally, when Mr Haythornthwaite had temporarily shaken off his illness enough to speak clearly, Mr Lascelles was reminded of the numerous gambling debts he owed to Mr Haythornthwaite and forced to sit behind the desk in the library to supervise the boys’ reading, set them tests, and answer their questions.

He bore it with bad grace; he had contempt for Gilbert, thinking him a weakling with no real talents, and a severe and undisguised hatred for John. But the longer he did bear it, the more debt Mr Haythornthwaite wrote off.

It was then that I heard from the cook that Mr Haythornthwaite, and not Mr Lascelles, owned Starecross Hall. It had been the Lascelles family seat for years, until Mr Lascelles had wagered it in a game he had been sure he could not lose. Mr Haythornthwaite had, apparently, told Mr Lascelles that if he managed to take charge of the boys’ education until such time as they could attend university, he would hand ownership of Starecross back to Lascelles.

And so this was how Mr Lascelles, whose father had been a Member of Parliament, whose elder brother was some General or other in the army, and whose younger brother was a respected academic who wrote boring but well-regarded papers on geology, became tutor to two young orphan boys.

He started quietly. For the first few weeks, he barely said a word. And then, emboldened by the deference of the servants, he would call up a startled Gilbert to repeat what he had learned that day, and if he could not repeat it exactly as it had been written in the book, then Mr Lascelles would not allow him to open another all week. He was thwarted in this by the facts that Gilbert cottoned on quickly and that his memory was excellent – and so, he added a second caveat. If Gilbert ever came to conclusions that the book did not itself expound – for instance, if Gilbert combined the testimony of two authors – then the punishment applied as before. Dissuaded from complaining to his uncle by the latter’s ill health, Gilbert dealt with it, and only showed Mr Lascelles the intelligence he expected. But John did not let it go so easily. He did nothing so obvious as actively work against Mr Lascelles, but he showed such an enraging combination of wit, aptitude, and sulkiness that Mr Lascelles’ attention was much diverted.

I kept a diary of what I saw and heard – Lascelles being one of those men that believed servants utterly without senses and blindly loyal to any authority that presented itself. In the middle of June, when Mr Haythornthwaite had finally recovered from all his illnesses and subsequent consequences, I went to him with my diary. Perhaps, with hindsight, I should have done differently, but at that point the outcome was what I had hoped for. Mr Lascelles was denied his way of getting back his house, and was no longer the boys’ tutor.

It didn’t take long for Mr Haythornthwaite to understand that John and Gilbert did well enough without a tutor – Mr Haythornthwaite’s library was large enough to be a tutor all of its own, and as much as John preferred to be outside he was a scholar by nature, almost as much so Gilbert. And so the boys spent much of the day alone, on the moor or in the library, or under my meagre supervision.

We were in the library, on this one particular day towards the end of summer when the weather was too bad to read outside. Rain pounded at the windows, intermittently turning to hail, and it was so dark even in the middle of the afternoon that I had just returned from fetching candles.

Gilbert had climbed all the way to the top of the bookcase stairs while I was gone, and I very nearly screamed to see him there. He had terrible balance and I was sure he would fall, and that I would lose my place. But John glanced at me and I could read in his face that he had already fussed and that it had done no good.

“John,” said Gilbert then, leaning against the banister, in a hollow, shocked kind of voice.

John hmm’d in answer and Gilbert’s head snapped up, irate.

“John.”

John sighed, closed his book, and stood up, going over to the stairs and leaning on the banister.

I pretended to be busy lighting the candles I had fetched, though I was listening as hard as I could and sneaking glances at them every so often.

“Look,” Gilbert said, quietly enough that I think he thought he was being discreet. I heard John climb up to stand next to him and look at whatever it was Gilbert had found, and then heard a gasp that he quickly cut short. When I looked up, they were staring at each other like utter fools.

“Found summat good?” I asked, because I was feeling left out and it stung.

Gilbert and John hissed to each other, and then said, as one, that they hadn’t – it looked like it was something, but it turned out not to be.

Of course, I didn’t believe them in the slightest. But I had no idea what I could do to get them to tell me – we were not, you understand, the kind of children who could gain truths through a tussle. So I simply took to busywork while they cast shifty glances at each other and passed notes, and spent the afternoon in a state of steadily increasing bitterness.

They were called in for tea some hours later, and I was taken for duties in the garden; possibly to avoid garnering suspicion, they did not return to the library – but I did.

After the house had gone to bed, I slipped out of the room I shared with the laundry maid, and crept through the sleeping house – it was warmer then, more hospitable, without strange lights and corridors that moved under your feet – to the library. I lit myself a candle once I got there, and climbed up the bookcase stairs. I could see, in the light dust on the shelf, which book Gilbert had taken, and took it down myself. It was a slim volume, the seventh of a series on Northern Economic History, and seemed entirely unworthy of the day’s excitement until some candlewax dripped onto my hand and I dropped the book in my haste to keep the candle steady. It fell over the edge of the banister, all the way to the floor, and I rushed down to see the damage.

I panicked, at first, to see one page lying separate from the rest, but when I got there and looked properly I realised that the loose leaf did not belong to the book in question – it was a small thing, dirty and soft with folds, and must have been pressed into use as a bookmark. I picked it up, tipping it towards the light to better read it.

 _A Spell To Join Together Two Articles Which Have Been Parted,_ it read, in the intensely round writing I recognised from the very oldest of Mr Haythornthwaite’s books.

I think I was frozen in place for a few moments – but when I came back to myself, I replaced the leaf in the book with shaking hands, and returned it to the shelf.

I put out the candle and went back to bed, but couldn’t bring myself to sleep.

 

\--

 

I blinked at her for a good few moments, and her smile grew steadily more smug.

“You found a spell?” I asked, in a faint voice, “An actual spell? I have – I have only twice in my life seen a book of magic! Twice! And neither of them were so kind as to provide a spell in the manner of a recipe!”

She cleared her throat. “It was only the one spell.”

I spluttered. “One spell is – even one spell is worth a fortune!”

“I didn’t know that, then. I don’t think the boys did, either. I only really knew that it would be trouble – that, at least, I have a sixth sense for.”

I laughed, as she wanted me to, and she stood up.

“John’ll need me to be getting back, I’m afraid,” she said, “There’s only so many days in a row I can leave Dido and Lucy in charge of the kitchen. It’ll be as bad as France, in there.”

“Will you return tomorrow?”

She frowned. “Do you need me to?”

“You have not finished your story.”

“You’re better than you were, and you know where to find me,” she said, and walked out of my room with the finality of a gunshot.

It was only later, picking over my first full meal since before my illness, that I realised that I had been out-manoeuvred.


	4. Chapter Four

The following day, I woke well; slightly tired, but no longer ill. A letter from Mr Honeyfoot awaited me on the table at breakfast, and he expressed both worry and well wishes. I replied immediately, continuing the letter I had begun the day before, and told him that Yorkshire had been kinder to me than I had expected. In truth, as much as I was referring to Hannah, I was also thinking of Mr Childermass’s notes that he had given me permission to copy. I had refrained from thinking about them – indeed, I had half forgotten – while I was ill, but now the prospect of riding to Hurtfew Abbey seemed so much more likely and it was difficult to think of anything else.

I was, however, somewhat apprehensive about meeting the master himself again. I had grown to like him, during the span of Mrs Winthrop’s tale, seeing him as a bright and precocious boy that I recognised from my own youth – and I worried that seeing him again as he truly was would sour him in my eyes.

In this way, with these ditherings to waylay me, I did not leave the house until noon was quickly approaching. The moor that I rode across that day was a calmer one than any version of itself I had crossed before; the sky was pale, but cloudless, and the air was frozen but still. The moor reared before me in yellowing greens and the brown of dead fern and dead heather; gorse lay in fragments, thorny and flowerless. The earth was soft with the melted snow, but had dried out of muddiness, and the path and its markers were clear enough.

I, for once, made good time. I arrived at Hurtfew Abbey’s open gate not long after I heard the distant church bell ring out midday, and young Lucas came out to meet me with a sharp, satisfied smile on his face.

“Hannah said you’d be coming today, sir,” he said, as I dismounted and he took my horse by the bridle, “They’re waiting for you in the kitchen.”

“I am glad to prove her right,” I replied, and he led me around the house to the kitchen door. He didn’t see me in, as he had to take the horse to the stable, and I made my way in on my own. I felt the impertinence of it, but I think perhaps I was the only one who did.

True to Lucas’s word, Mr Childermass and Mrs Winthrop were seated at the table, while the pale young girl that it took me a moment to remember as Lucy bustled around them in a passable imitation of Hannah. I bowed to them both, and Mr Childermass bade me sit.

“I am glad to see you in good health, Mr Segundus,” he said.

“I am glad to be so,” I smiled, “And thank you for allowing me to return, after making so much trouble of myself.”

He shrugged, in answer to this, and then said to Lucy that she could begin serving lunch. The girl nodded, and then disappeared into the passage. A few minutes later, a loud and piercing voice the kind of which I would never have expected to come out of a tiny young lady so meek looking rang all through the house, shouting for the other servants.

From the volume, I expected all of Yorkshire to turn up; but only four people filed in. Lucas, followed closely by a tall young man who I learnt was called Davey, and then a dark-skinned lady named Dido. Davey and Lucas took the far end of the table, both of them squeezed on to the shorter edge, Dido took her seat next to Hannah – and opposite myself, my position being next to Mr Childermass – and then Lucy, once she had brought a large pan of soup to the table and wheedled Lucas into fetching bowls and spoons, sat at the other end.

“Matthew not in?” Lucas asked, in a breezy, but studied, way.

“He went to visit Jeremy,” Lucy replied, and if I am not mistaken, I saw Lucas’s face fall.

It was novel, to me, their dynamic. I had never, before coming to Yorkshire, eaten with the servants, and I had not heard that the county was known for such transgressions of usual boundaries – yet every meal I had eaten here, I had eaten in the presence of at least one servant, and the Hurtfew staff seemed perfectly at ease eating at the same table as their master.

“I hope lovesickness isn’t keeping you from your job, Lucas,” the aforementioned master said, and I froze.

I do not know if I was caught freezing, or if my presence was simply recalled all of a sudden, but everyone turned to look at me. Lucas was red-faced, and his eyes, which were fixed on mine, were as terrified and wide as my own.

I found I could not break the eye contact. I was cold with apprehension, with fear both on my part and his.

I cleared my throat, trying to erase the knot in it. “I find,” I started, “That lovesickness is as incurably debilitating as any other – it is most selfish of the objects of our affections to sicken us so.”

Lucas blinked, and then he smiled. “See! Mr Segundus does not tease me!”

“Mr Segundus is not exposed to your besotted expression every day of the damn week,” Davey said, but his voice was light.

I smiled myself in response, but turned my attention to my soup in an attempt to disappear once more. I did not miss, however, the way Dido slipped her hand into Hannah’s.

In hindsight, I think I was somewhat in shock; for lunch passed easily and quickly, and I even contributed comfortably enough to the conversation – yet now, I cannot recall a word of what was said. Never before had I been so revealed, and never before had I been so comfortable being known for what I was. Before this, I had only been known fleetingly, or – perhaps furtively is the word. I had never thought a situation such as this was possible. It reminded me, in some small way, of my dinners at the home of the Honeyfoots in York – and I think I daydreamed briefly of having this same openness with them.

But beyond this I cannot recall; I know that lunch was delicious, I know that Lucas and Davey spend the whole meal kicking each other under the table and threatening to throw bread in each other’s faces. But I only know this – I cannot recall it.

In any event, I came back to myself some thirty minutes or so later, when Hannah bustled myself and Mr Childermass into the corridor and gave me a stern look.

“You look a little pale,” was what Mr Childermass decided on as an opening statement.

I wondered how he could tell in the darkness of the corridor; there were no windows, no candles, and I could barely see him.

“I – I believe my startlement has not faded, sir.”

I heard a shifting of fabric and surmised that he had shrugged. “Our house is a unique one.”

“It is that,” I said, with some whisper of relief, and without answering Mr Childermass led me away from the kitchen and deeper into the house. He warned me to be careful, and in deference to the darkness I barely lifted my feet, skimming them over the floor so that I would not be caught unawares by a step or corner.

At first I was comfortable enough; the dark was mildly unsettling, but Mr Childermass led me with confidence and so I followed with only a little less. But as we walked, as the corridor wound – we had never once turned a corner or encountered more than two steps at once, but I was convinced it was spiralling upwards -  I began to hear voices. They were muffled, as if coming from a room on the other side of the wall, and there were two of them – one just barely above a whisper, even and steady, the other louder and more aggravated. For a good five minutes or so I only heard indistinct murmurings, but then the louder voice seemed to reach the peak of his aggravation and I heard, as clear as if I had just walked straight by him, the words “ _Really, Gilbert!”._

Childermass, who had heretofore been perfectly steady, tripped over a knot in the floorboards.

I reached out and caught him by the sleeve, and helped him to steady himself. “Are you well?”

He cleared his throat. “Quite well, thank you. I merely-” he stopped.

“The darkness is rather disorientating.”

“Yes.”

“Some light, perhaps-”

“I know the geography of my own house.”

I was very glad he could not see the way I raised my eyebrow at this.

“Besides,” he said, a less defensive tone coming into his voice, “We’re here now.” He turned, and opened a door that almost seemed to appear from nowhere. Light flooded out, and I stood blinking foolishly for a few moments until my eyes adjusted. Mr Childermass stood in the doorway, protected by his back being to the light, and I saw him smirk.

“Are you waiting for an invitation, Mr Segundus? If I had known you desired one in writing, I would have sent it with Hannah.”

“Hannah told me she rather sent herself,” I said, stung, and walked into his study. I wondered, absently, if it had always been his or if he had taken over his guardian’s.

He closed the door behind me and went over to the desk, sitting down in the large chair behind it.

The chair, as I say, was huge; Mr Childermass is not a short man – not far off six foot, I would say – but he was dwarfed by it, and would have looked like a young boy in his father’s chair if it were not for the roughness of his expression and the confidence with which he sat back.

I revised my mental image of Mr Haythornthwaite, and sat down in the chair on the other side of the desk. This one was not a match for the other, as convention usually would demand – it looked like he had stolen it from another room for the purposes of my visit.

“Hannah is indeed a law unto herself,” he said, and I smiled.

“I got that impression.”

“I hope she was so much of a mother hen as to make herself a nuisance.”

“Oh! No, not at all. I appreciated her company – she has been giving me a history of the area.”

“Anything of particular interest?”

“I’m afraid I can remember little – I was ill, after all.”

“Perhaps just as well – we have very little history of interest, in this corner of Yorkshire.”

“Apart from the Raven King.”

Mr Childermass gave me a long look, one corner of his mouth twisting up. It was neither a smirk nor a smile, but it was knowing, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

“Have you not heard?” he said, still wearing that almost-smile, “The Manchester Society has discredited our connection.”

“Then they have never set foot on that moor, nor breathed this air, nor heard the trees whisper. The Manchester Society are good scholars, I am certain. But they are not magicians.”

Mr Childermass stood up, and went over to the bookcase on the far wall, where the dimensions of the room protected the spines from what little sunlight ever broke through the windowpanes.

I did not realise how much I had said, how firmly I had spoken, until he stood without replying. As much as I believed what I had said, I understood then that I had been counting on his good opinion – being denied it pained me, and I reddened.

He took a stack of leather-bound journals from his shelves and brought them to the desk, where he dropped them in front of me. I realised these were the same kind as those in which Mr Norrell – I had called him Gilbert in my head – had recorded his days, and I felt a pang of sympathy for them both.

“This is what I have left of Mr Norrell’s library,” he said, “I apologise for how little there is.”

My eyes widened. "This is more than I ever let myself imagine,” I said, and if I am not mistaken I saw a smug kind of pleasure on his face.

“Read of it as you like,” he said, “I hope it will help you.”

“Thank you,” I was a little overwhelmed – even knowing of the library, I had not imagined there to be enough magic in it to amount to ten thick journals’ worth of notes, “I am sure that in all this I can find my answers.”

Mr Childermass, who had turned towards the windows in order to give me a little privacy, turned back and frowned at me.

“Answers?”

“I make it my business to ask children’s questions, sir – those which have escaped scholarly consideration for too long.”

“Such as, ‘How many fairy servants did Martin Pale have, and what did they contribute to his works?’”

This, I thought, was intended to sting, but I had heard worse from every one of the magical societies I had visited on my way north. Instead, I smiled serenely.

“Such as, ‘Why is there no longer any magic done in England?’”

From his expression, I saw I had startled him.

“But I am beginning to feel that it is possibly the wrong question to be asking,” I continued, and he sat down opposite me, leaning forward very slightly.

“How do you mean?”

I traced my fingers over the cover of the uppermost journal. “I mean,” I began, breathing deeply to steady myself, “That you were right, that night. I saw him, in the mirror. And I heard Jonathan Strange’s voice, not ten minutes ago.”

His eyes did not widen, his face did not pale, nor his mouth open. It was nothing so obvious as that. But there was shock in his face, and an emotion underneath it that I hesitated to attempt to interpret.

“Mr Segundus,” he began, but his voice failed him, cracking as I had heard it crack when Mr Norrell vanished from the mirror.

“There is magic in this house, Mr Childermass. I would swear to it.”

He stood again with enough force that the chair was pushed back, the legs scratching loudly against the floor.

“Get out.”

“Mr Childermass-”

“Are you deaf?” he snapped, loudly enough that I blanched, and I near ran from the room. Once the door had closed behind me, I stopped, breathing quickly and shaking – I fell back against the wall, and tried not to let myself give in to the emotion that threatened. I thought I had managed to keep it at bay when I heard something smash against the door, and in the midst of my surprise tears began to well. I turned and ran down the corridor, dashing at my eyes with a palm. I barely cared where I ran to – I certainly did not have the presence of mind to be sure that I was going the same way that I had come – but after what seemed barely any time at all, I tumbled through the kitchen door and straight into Hannah.

She caught me with both hands and held me away from her, peering into my face. “John? What’s wi’ thee?”

“I told him,” I said, my voice half buried by my tears, which to my shame I could not keep from flowing, “About – about the mirror.”

She tutted loudly, and bustled me into one of the kitchen chairs. “Dido, love, get the kettle on. The lad needs tea.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, pulling a handkerchief out of my pocket and trying again to wipe my tears away, “It is most childish of me-”

“You’re overwrought,” she said, in a voice that brooked no argument, “You’re poorly still, and you’ve had us to contend with as well as John being an arse.”

“I don’t think Mr Segundus needs exposing to your tongue, dear,” Dido said, passing me a fresh handkerchief.

I thanked her quietly. “I don’t mind,” I said, once I had blown my nose, “It is an accurate assessment.”

This made both women laugh a little, and then Hannah reached out to me, putting one hand on the back of my shoulder.

“He didn’t take it well?”

“I’m not sure how he took it,” I said, “I thought it had gone well, and then he told me to get out. I should-” I started up to leave, and Hannah pushed me back down into my chair.

“You’re going nowhere in that state,” she said, and to push the point home Dido put a cup of tea in front of me.

“Are you taking John one?” Dido asked Hannah, and I almost opened my mouth before I managed to process what she meant.

“Maybe afterwards,” she replied, and, satisfied that I was not going to try to escape, stamped off out of the kitchen and into the house.

I watched her go, frowning a little.

“She’s gone to yell at him,” Dido said, sitting down opposite me and touching the back of my hand with her fingertips.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I did not mean to cause upset.”

“I don’t think _you’ve_ caused it.”

“But-”

“She’s been spoiling for a row all week, Mr Segundus, don’t think this is an inconvenience to her.”

I gave in and picked up my tea. It was hot through the china, almost hot enough to make it painful to hold, and something in the heat soothed me.

“She’s fond of you, Mr Segundus,” Dido said, some minutes later, after I had sniffed my way to some semblance of composedness.

I frowned. “She is?”

“Do you think she goes to see every southerner that falls ill after walking into our house?”

Something in the way she phrased that made me frown further. “Madam-”

“Dido,” she said, “Mrs Winthrop, if you must.”

“Does that not make things confusing?”

She laughed. “I’m sure Hannah will find space for it in one of her stories.”

I smiled, though I knew it to be weak, and sipped at my tea.

“Thank you,” I said, “For your hospitality.”

“You’ve done nothing to make us deny you it.”

“Even so.”

She smiled herself and stood up, going over to a basket of mending on a chair near the back door. She was just about to pick it up when Hannah stormed back in and threw herself into the chair beside me.

“Well, he’s in a bit of a state,” she said to the room at large, and Dido tutted as I opened my mouth to apologise.

Hannah waved me off. “Not your fault. He asked me to pass on his apologies – needless to say, I refused. I’m his cook, not his mouthpiece.”

“Does not the fact that you told us he asked you to suggest that-” I started.

“Oh, shush, you’re as bad as him.”

I made to stand up. “I think I should go,” I said, and Hannah threw an arm over my shoulders to keep me in my seat.

“There’s no need to do that,” she said, “He’ll come around in a little while, and if he finds out you’re not here for him to, to,” she cast around for a word, “To _magician_ at, he’ll just ride to Starecross and make a nuisance of himself there. It’s better you just stay here and wait.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” I said.

“Wouldn’t have said so if I weren’t.”

 I tried to relax, though it was difficult with my mood as it was, and I resumed drinking my tea while Dido came back to the table and started on her mending.

“Where was I?” Hannah asked, and I looked up.

“Mr Childermass,” I said, and Hannah shook her head.

“Not that. T’other thing.”

“Magic,” Dido said, and Hannah’s eyes brightened with remembrance.

 

\--

 

I kept my eye on them for a few days after that, or at least I tried. More often than not they went out on the moor, now that the weather was warming, and my duties, which were greater now that I was a little older, kept me away from them.

I could hardly say if there was owt different about them. I saw them rarely, both by accident and by design, and neither were overly expressive. I could have gone to Mr Haythornthwaite again, but it was theirs to keep – I was young enough to see no real danger in it, if they took to magic. But as it went, it were taken out of my hands. There used to be some decent pasture land hereabouts, and the shepherd that had the care of it – Tom Otherlander, Lucy’s father – he kept an eye on the boys when I could not, and one day, probably a week or so after the incident in the library, he came to the house. He passed me on the way to the parlour, where Mr Haythornthwaite had taken to spending his days, and once he had gone inside I doubled back on myself to listen at the door.

“It’s those boys of yours, sir,” he said, in a quiet voice that I had to strain to hear.

I could almost hear Mr Haythornthwaite frown. It was rare that they caused enough trouble to require him to know of it.

“Are they well?” he asked, and while his voice had the same depth it had always had, there was a rasp in it that had never been there before.

“Oh, aye, I didn’t mean to worry you on that score sir – they were well enough last time I saw – but-”

“But?”

There was a stormy breath from Mr Otherlander. “There’s summat brewing, sir. I can feel it.”

“You’ll have to be clearer than that, man. I can do little if you don’t tell me what it is.”

“You mistake my meaning, sir. My family and yours have lived on these moors hundreds o’ years, have we not? Them boys are toying wi’ that as they shouldn’t, and – _I can feel it_ , sir.”

There was the sound of the chair creaking, and Mr Haythornthwaite coughed.

“Do you mean to say,” he said, the end of his question disappearing in the face of his understanding.

“Aye, sir. I do.”

I ran, then, knowing the conversation was unlikely to bear any more fruit and that I would be discovered if I didn’t leave. I decided as I went that there was nothing I could do other than fetch John and Gilbert – to warn them, at the very least. And so I ran down the stairs to the kitchen and out the back door. A late spring storm had brought down part of the garden wall and I jumped it, rather than lose minutes going around. I landed half in a bundle of nettles but barely noticed, running along the narrow rabbit-paths, through flowering gorse and awakening heather. I lost one shoe down a foxhole and kicked the other off to clamber up over a high crag in only my stockings. I stopped when I reached the peak, grass prickling through the holes in my stockings to tickle the soles of my feet. From there I could see them both, sitting under the birch that grew at the foot of Penistone Crags – exactly where I had expected to find them.

I hollered, and John looked up, standing and starting towards me. I tried to gesture that they were wanted, but to no avail.

A track ran across the moor from our front gate almost to the Crags and I joined it, pounding along the hard, powdery earth until I was within earshot of them.

“You’re wanted,” I panted, “Or you will be. Mr Otherlander’s just seen the master now, and whatever you’re-” I gestured to the books and various broken twigs that littered the ground around them, “You need to come back.”

John and Gilbert looked at each other. John had a look in his eyes that was sharper than I had ever seen it, and I expected Gilbert to wilt under it – but he didn’t, and much to my surprise I saw the same look in Gilbert’s eyes.

“No,” Gilbert said.

“Gilbert-” I tried.

“He said no.”

“But, Mr Otherlander-”

“He doesn’t know what we’re doing.”

“I rather think he does!” I said, hotly.

“Hannah,” Gilbert said, speaking very softly, “This is important.”

I blinked at him, and out of the corner of my eye saw John fold his arms. I went cold all over, reminded of the way they had closed ranks on me just a few days before.

“Fine,” I said, “But they’ll find you here easy as anything. You’ll have to move.” I didn’t wait to see their reactions, but turned my back on them and went back along the track.

I ran into Jacob, the coachman, on the road; he was riding with a somewhat pensive expression on his face but without hurry.

“Seen the lads, Hannah?” he asked me.

I shook my head. “Lost my shoes looking, too.”

He winced exaggeratedly in sympathy and offered to take me back to the house, but I refused. True it would have delayed him, but I didn’t much feel like company, and besides, I thought it would do them good to be found.

He shrugged and carried on.

 

\--

 

I returned to the house with my stockings in tatters and my hem filthy, and Cook found enough breath to give me a good yelling at for it – but she was busy enough to let me go quickly, and I hid myself in my room and sat down on my bed to think. Mr Otherlander had seemed to say that what they were doing was dangerous, and when I found them they hadn’t been themselves at all. I considered going to Mr Haythornthwaite, but he hadn’t sounded well, and after I thought that Gilbert and John may see that as a betrayal I gave up on the whole business. Let them get into trouble. Let them bring down the moor with their magic if they must, and much good may it do them.

My sulking was disturbed a few minutes later by chores that needed doing. I tried to put the boys out of my mind, and got on with the work I had to do – but it began to grow late, and as the sky darken with rainclouds and the hour I became worried. It was hardly the first time they’d been out so late, but Gilbert was ever-responsible – at least as far as books were concerned – and would never have stayed out once a storm threatened.

Jacob returned a little before tea, soaked through and haggard. No sign, he told us, and I ran from the kitchen to ball myself up in front of the library fire and pray that they would not be lost for my lying.

I stayed there for a long time; tea had been and gone by the time the library door opened and I raised my head.

It was Mr Haythornthwaite, looking wan with deep circles around his eyes and a waver in the frame that had once been steady enough to put the house itself to shame. He was carrying a tray, which suggested to me that he had managed to get in and out of the kitchen while Cook was distracted, for there was no way she would have let him carry anything.

“There you are,” he said to me, and sat on the sopha just to the left of me. He took a plate from the tray that he had rested on his knees and passed it to me.

“Cook’s worried about you,” he said, as I picked at the cold chicken on the plate. There was a little bread too, and a hardboiled egg, but the idea of any of it turned my stomach.

“Thank you, sir,” I said, finally finding my voice.

He looked at me and after a moment he laughed. “You haven’t family in town, have you?”

I shook my head. I had none – my ma had sent me here from York, her being too poor to keep me, and I hadn’t heard from her in years.

“Then I wonder if the King has not just given me two sons but a daughter too,” he said, and I was too tired to take offense.

Still, I appreciated it, if not as much as he had wished, and it loosened something in my chest.

“I saw them,” I said.

“I know.”

“They wouldn’t come in.”

“I know.”

“I should have tried harder.”

“Do you truly think that those boys will listen to anyone, when they get an idea in their heads?”

I shrugged, and Mr Haythornthwaite laughed quietly once more. “As if I needed proof of the matter,” he said, but it was only to himself and so it barely bothered me that I didn’t understand his meaning, “They will come home, Hannah. These are the King’s lands – he will not let them come to harm.”

I took a little comfort from that, though only a little.

 

\--

 

It was after midnight when there came the noise of galloping hooves coming up the drive, and then a pounding on the front door. Mr Haythornthwaite had sent the house to bed, besides myself – he seemed to realise I wouldn’t be able to sleep until the boys came home – and so it was he who opened the door to discover Mr Lascelles on his doorstep.

Mr Lascelles was wild-eyed and aggravated, his hair heavily windswept, but his coat was only a little damp.

“Your wards broke into my house,” he snapped, and Mr Haythornthwaite opened his mouth, “No, no, I will not have this. I will not have this indignity so soon on the heels of the other, John Haythornthwaite! I shall not have it! They came to Starecross with the intention to cause trouble! My son is in a terrible state!”

“My sympathies to you and your son,” he replied, “But the household has been in extreme suspense, and if you will tell me where they are, I-”

Mr Lascelles scoffed, and then stomped down the steps back to his horse, where we for the first time saw Gilbert sitting behind the saddle. He dismounted with Mr Lascelles’ meagre help, and Mr Lascelles dragged him up the steps by his collar.

“You can have this one back,” he said, acid in his voice, “I could only bring the one. The other is still at Starecross – a right wild little devil he is, n’all,” Mr Lascelles’ southern accent slipped in his aggravation, and after the fact I laughed about this on many occasions, “Felt he was within his rights to attack my property.”

“John was only defending me,” Gilbert said, outrage breaking through the open terror on his face, and Mr Haythornthwaite reached out and ripped him from Mr Lascelles’ grasp. Gilbert half-dived through the open door, and I hugged him tight. He sobbed into my shoulder loud enough to be heard by Mr Lascelles, who rolled his eyes. At that, Mr Haythornthwaite stiffened further.

“John’s at Starecross, you say?”

“My footmen had to shut him in the scullery to calm down. God knows what damage he’ll have done.”

Mr Haythornthwaite stormed past him, down the stairs and around the side of the house. Mr Lascelles looked around wildly and ran down to his own horse, sparing barely a glance for the two of us and the wide open door. Gilbert and I heard the stable door, and then a few minutes later, Mr Haythornthwaite came around the house atop his best horse, riding almost at full gallop. Mr Lascelles mounted as fast as he could and chased after him, leaving Gilbert and I staring out into the dark.

 

\--

 

The grandfather clock in the hall rang two before Mr Haythornthwaite came riding back to the house with John before him; the storm had resuscitated itself in the meantime, and both came back drenched to the skin.

Mine and Gilbert’s noise had woken a couple of the other servants, including Jacob who ran out into the rain when he heard them returning; he helped John and Mr Haythornthwaite down before taking the horse back to the stable. Cook, the other that had woken, fussed about them both and made cocoa for all of us, herself and Jacob included. We sat in the parlour, Gilbert and John huddled together on the floor, Mr Haythornthwaite on the sopha, Jacob and Cook each on a chair, and me lurking by the door. John, on Gilbert’s insistence sitting nearest the fire, was slowly drying out, his hair curling from the water. There was blood on his collar and cuffs, but he’d assured us that it wasn’t anything worth bothering over, and he was drinking his cocoa with dedication so we didn’t worry too badly on his account.

He, nor Gilbert, would speak to what made them end up at Starecross until Mr Haythornthwaite, staring into the fire and, from his breathing, trying to keep down a cough, said “I know.”

It was nothing more than that, but Gilbert squeezed John’s hand and John put his cocoa down on the rug to better begin.

“We left Penistone Crags to head up Whixley way, after Hannah told us you were looking,” he gave me a guilty look, “But the rain started not long after and we got turned around. We got to Starecross by accident – we truly didn’t mean to go there, much as Mr Lascelles thought otherwise. We knocked on for shelter, just while the rain stopped, and this dog came out of nowhere – ugly brute, barking like we were the devil hisself – and went to set on Gilbert. I wrestled it away when Mr Lascelles’s son saw us through the window and started up screaming. Mr Lascelles opened the door and decided that he’d let Gilbert in, just for an hour or so, but he shut the door before I could come in too. I tried to go around, but they threatened me with more dogs if I didn’t go. I went back and saw Gilbert through the window – Master Lascelles was trying to cozy up to him a bit, but he saw me through the window and we both kicked off. So Mr Lascelles had his footmen shut me in the scullery.”

“I asked for us to be taken back,” Gilbert added, his voice rusty with tears, “But Mr Lascelles refused to ride in the rain, and he wouldn’t send us in the carriage.”

Mr Haythornthwaite got up and started to pace, running his hands through his hair. He hissed through his teeth, as if he were trying not to swear, and Jacob stood up, going over to him and resting his hand on Mr Haythornthwaite’s shoulder.

“John,” he said, almost soft enough to go unheard.

Mr Haythornthwaite stopped, his hand falling from his hair and his posture slackening. “I could kill that man,” he said, but his voice cracked on the last word and the cough he had buried bubbled up and forced him to double over. Jacob tightened his grip on his shoulder and steered him to sit back down on the sopha.

“I know,” he said, “But there’s nowt you can do tonight. Call him out in the morning, if you must.”

Mr Haythornthwaite laughed at this, once he stopped coughing. He looked up, and saw the concern on Jacob’s face.

“I’m fine,” he said, “Don’t fuss. Doctor says I’m fine.”

I saw Jacob swallow thickly, and he laid his hand back on Mr Haythornthwaite’s shoulder before drifting back to his own chair.

But Mr Haythornthwaite didn’t call him out in the morning. He didn’t make it through the night.

 

\--

 

Hannah blinked and took a deep breath. I reached out, unsure of what I could do but wanting to soothe her. She caught my hand and squeezed, but let go soon after to blow her nose on a corner of her apron which made Dido roll her eyes.

“I think we were all in shock,” she started, and Dido clucked her tongue.

“No more stories just now,” she said, her voice soft but stern, “Tea now.”

She got up from the table and put the kettle back on the fire, collecting our cups and fetching a third for Hannah.

Hannah sighed, and stood up a little to reach over the table and pull Dido’s mending nearer. She set to it while Dido made the tea, her stitches sharp and jabbing rather than Dido’s soothing, flowing work.

I believe I became aware of the footsteps before I heard them; I had the sensation that soon we would be disturbed, and it sat in the pit of my stomach like a dead weight.

“What happened to Jacob?” I asked.

“He works in the village now,” Dido said, “At the pub.”

I frowned. I had stopped in Thorpe Underwood  on the way to Hurtfew on my first day, for I had arrived at the village very late at night, and decided to stay the night at the inn.

“Tall man,” I said, remembering the man who had taken my horse, “Blonde hair, long-since broken nose.”

“That’s him. I don’t know where he got the nose.”

“He punched Mr Lascelles at the funeral,” Hannah said, not looking up from her sewing.

“And good thing he did,” Mr Childermass said, startling all three of us, “Someone needed to.” He was standing in the open doorway, lit unflatteringly by the fire. There was a little redness around his eyes and exhaustion in the way he held himself, and his voice was hoarse.

“Aye, and you couldn’t reach.”

He barely seemed to hear her, his eyes fixed on my face. “Mr Segundus,” he said.

“A-yes.” I had almost said _aye_ , but stopped myself before he could think I was mocking him and his house.

“I hope that you will accept my apologies. I was not myself, before.”

“Of course,” I said, and then winced, conscious of the possibility that while I had meant it in response to the first he may have taken it in response to the second.

“Would you – may I request your company in my study, once more?”

“Of course,” I repeated, and stood up.

“Thank you,” he said, in such a way as to suggest that it pained him.

“I’ll bring you tea in,” Dido said, already fetching a tray, and I thanked her to save Mr Childermass the trouble.

I followed him back into the house, trailing behind him along the corridor. It seemed to veer much more sharply than before, turning a new corner every few paces, and I considered that that could have been explained by my not taking proper notice the previous time. Still, it made me uneasy. Then, however, Mr Childermass warned me to be careful and went as far as taking my hand and placing it on a banister as the corridor descended into a flight of stairs that had most definitely not been there before.

But then, from the creak in the treads, the steepness and the narrowness, I realised that these were the stairs that Hannah had led me up the first night, and I stopped dead one step from the bottom.

“The servant’s stairs,” I said.

“Aye.”

“But I went up these-”

“Aye.”

“Is this – is this your magic?”

“Not mine, Mr Segundus. Nor any of this earth.”

“What, then?”

“If I had an answer for that I would not be letting a second pair of eyes look over my notes.”

He had moved ahead of me and I leapt up the last step to make up the distance.

“I do not remember volunteering-”

He turned on me. “I thought you wanted an answer to your question, Mr Segundus. I have it on good authority that the answers are in these walls, if only I can get to them, and I would have thought that were you as committed as you come across-”

“Of course I am!”

“Well then.”

I spluttered, finding myself out-argued, and I heard him laugh under his breath.

“You are entertainingly easy to rile, Mr Segundus.”

“I’m glad _someone_ is amused.”

“Then we are in agreement, on your aid.”

 I rolled my eyes, thinking that this action was much more necessary to one’s repertoire in Hurtfew than anywhere I had been previously.

“I find I have no grounds on which to object – you argue every one from under me.”

“Thank you.”

“It was not a compliment.”

“But I choose to take it as one.”

“You are impossible.”

“So says everyone I have ever met.”

I found myself smiling, despite myself. “I cannot say I’m surprised, but we’ll take all day to reach your study at this rate.”

“We’re already here,” he said, reaching past me to open the door and smiling in the resulting light.

 

\--

 

We settled as we had before, Mr Childermass in the large desk chair and myself in the smaller one opposite him.

I had just taken the first book off the pile that was still sitting where I had left it when he spoke.

“What lead you to be speaking of Jacob?”

“I – I asked if your household had always been so small. And if it had always been so – unique.”

“You have me to blame for that,” he said, “I am judicious in who I hire.”

“It seems to serve you well. Have you been in charge here long?”

“Four years or so, on and off. Hannah has not told you?”

“She’s told me very little of your situation. She tended to focus on less immediate histories.”

“Ah.”

I gestured to the book. “May I continue?”

“Oh, my apologies. Of course.”

Even with that permission, I hesitated. I was opening only the second book of magic I had ever touched, and it made my heart catch in my throat. I stroked my palm over the cover and opened it slowly, dimly aware that Mr Childermass was smirking.

I was seized by the urge to kick him under the table, but resisted.

I opened the book, delaying no longer, and was confronted with page after page of loose, scrawling handwriting that ran every which way over the page. Some paragraphs were in English, some in French, and some in Latin, which was fair enough, but then a few paragraphs – strung thinly in the margins, parallel to the edge of the page – were in languages I did not recognise.

“What,” I said, “Do you expect me to do with this?”

Mr Childermass waved a hand. “Find something.”

“In this? This is worse than the proverbial haystack!”

He snorted. “It makes perfect sense.”

“It does not.”

“There’s an index.”

I flicked to the back of the book and found nothing that looked even remotely like an index, and then I looked up to discover that he was pointing to the last book.

“I don’t even know what you expect me to find – what you expect me to find that you can’t.”

“You have a different perspective. You may look at things differently.”

I put the book back on the pile and then hefted the pile down onto the floor beside me. I took my journal – the very one in which I write now – out of my pocket, and reached across the table to take a pencil from beside his blotting pad.

“Excuse me-”

“I have a method.”

He snorted again, this time with some derision. “Why you cannot just look up what you experience-”

“Because your journals are a mess.”

“They are not.”

I decided we would get nowhere like this, and started with the execution of my own method.

“What, to your mind, is at issue here?”

“What is at issue is that you waste my time with interviews-”

“I said, I have a method. Describe to me what you see.”

“Were we not supposed to be getting tea? _Dido!”_

“Answer my question.”

He rolled his eyes, but I didn’t move from my ready position. Then he cleared his throat.

“I see him,” he said, “In the library, in the corridors, in the kitchen, on the moor. I see – I see the house, surrounded by darkness. No candle, no fire, keeps it back. I see – I see Jonathan _bloody_ Strange in my house, walking around my halls like he knows them. I hear things from the mirrors. The wind, the crows, his voice.”

“Norrell’s?”

Mr Childermass, who for the first time felt to me like the John Hannah spoke of, stared straight at me, his eyes searching my face.

“Are you a King’s man, Mr Segundus?”

It was a question I had never been asked. It was a question I had no idea how to answer.

“I was born in the North,” I said, “I call the late flowers John’s Farthings. I – I feel him, on the moors.”

“Then when I tell you that I hear John Uskglass’s voice through the mirrors, you know-” he broke off.

“Yes,” I said, “I know what you mean.”


	5. Chapter Five

Dido, as if she had known to give us time, came in with the tea tray just as Mr Childermass and I reached some kind of equilibrium.

“You took your time,” he said, though it had more an air of a token protest.

“I left right after you did,” she said, without confrontation, and put the tea down on the desk between us. She glanced at him, and then at me with a smile. She reached out as she left, laying her hand against my shoulder momentarily.

Once the door closed, Mr Childermass poured the tea.

“You have enchanted my cook and my housekeeper both, Mr Segundus.”

“I am merely a novelty to them.”

“You returned,” he said, “When most people do not.”

I reached for my cup, and turned down his offer of sugar. “You get other visitors.”

“The odd one. The darkness drives them off.”

“Would I not have heard-”

“I didn’t say they ever knew what it was that drove them off.”

I tapped my pencil against my journal, staring at the list I had made. Beneath what I was thinking of as Mr Childermass’s symptoms, I had written a list of my own. Darkness had no mention in mine – but the uneasy, uncanny light that I _had_ mentioned was making me think.

“Tell me more about this darkness?”

He frowned at me. “It’s a darkness.”

“What is its consistency? Is it just like the absence of light, or does it have texture?”

Understanding dawned. “It’s like – like fog, but dark,” the corner of his mouth pulled up in a grimace, “I can’t see six feet in front of me.”

“And nothing disturbs it?”

“No.”

“Would you say that – I mean, if it drives other people away, and Dido inferred it makes people sick – would you say that it has a psychological effect?”

“I would say that. I would say – I would say it is psychological effect made manifest.”

I smiled, feeling satisfaction, which was the wrong thing to do, for his entire face tightened.

“Mr Segundus, if this line of inquiry is just for your personal amusement-”

“Of course not! I am not that kind of man, and I am offended that you would think-”

He held up his hands, laughing slightly. “I’m sorry I asked,” he said, in a sardonic tone.

I decided to give up my questioning, wary of what might result – I had, I will admit, been placated, but I did not desire to push further and run the risk of breaking what truce we had – and sat back in the chair with my tea in my hands.

The study was warmer than it had been, I thought, even though the fire was beginning to burn down. It crackled and spat still, but more quietly, as if muffled, and I could hear nothing from outside – it was only when I looked up, over Mr Childermass’s shoulder and out of the window, that I realised it was raining heavily. It made the landscape beyond drift and drip into smudges like an oil painting, which I realise is a hackneyed expression – but nothing else conveys how unreal the outside world felt at that moment. The world could have disappeared from around me and I would not have minded, so long as could have stayed in the warmth and gradually growing comfort of that room.

“Mr Segundus-” he started.

“My name is John,” I said, still caught up in the peace I was feeling. I didn’t even realise what I had said until I was met with silence.

I turned my gaze from the window to his face. He looked startled – startled, but less closed than I had seen him before.

“John,” he said, as if he were tasting it.

“Are you waiting for my middle names, too?”

He laughed. “Will you be returning?”

“Returning?”

“Well, I presume you shan’t want to spend the night here, after last time, and you will have to leave soon if you want to cross the moor in daylight.”

“Oh. Well, yes, I shall return if you wish. If you think I can be of help.”

“I do.”

I smiled. “Well then.”

 

\--

 

I did return to Starecross in daylight, though I was sorry to leave. I saw no-one, when I walked in, and for a moment I fancied I could hear the noises of the night in Hannah’s story – Gilbert, John, and the cruelty of the elder Lascelles.

In my absentminded contemplation I barely noticed that I had drifted into the parlour, and was standing before the portraits of both Mr Lascelles. Side by side, they were barely distinguishable. Both long-nosed and fine-jawed, with hair that was neither precisely red nor precisely brown, and with a spark of something unkind in the eyes. Perhaps the artist was of prodigious talent, or perhaps I was being fanciful. They seemed, other than these pictures, entirely exorcised from the house. It was easier for me to see John and Gilbert in these walls – easier even to see Jonathan Strange, whose appearance I had no idea of – than to see the Misters Lascelles. But even the rest of them were fleeting impressions on my conscious – the house was barely one at all. Perhaps my perception was altered by the easy fragility of Hurtfew, its claustrophobic sense of openness and the tension that seemed to lie under every word. It was the kind of house that filled the mind, and Starecross was the exact reverse. I felt empty. I felt dusty, almost – unused, lost, neglected. Selfish of me, I know. Still, I did have a job to do – it had occurred to me on the ride that we did not only have Mr Childermass’s notes, but that we also had Jonathan Strange’s – and I was in the perfect position to discover what lay in them.

I was attempting not to get my hopes up, but I admit I was very enamoured of the idea of returning to Hurtfew with something to add. I left the parlour and closed the door behind me. I had the notion that the room would now disappear, as I felt it would have in Hurtfew, but the house did not oblige me. I went upstairs to my room, and pulled Jonathan Strange’s desk drawer out from under my bed. I tipped it out onto the rug and sat down, taking off my shoes so as not to get mud on my breeches when I folded my legs up under me.

I began by organising the papers. Correspondence went to my left and handwritten notes went to my right. Anything else went in between. Then I further sorted the correspondence into drafts that he had written and letters that he had received; from there, I sorted out which were of relevance – ie, those letters which were either to Norrell or from him.

That which appeared, at this moment, to not be of interest, I put back in the drawer. The rest, I began to look through. It was all a very great deal, now that I was well and could properly digest it, about identification and location. He and Norrell had spent at least six letters arguing back and forth over the Roman Genius Loci and whether they or the principle were of use in English magic.

 _Is it the house itself which knows?_ Strange had written in one of his many drafts _, or is there a spirit attached to the house, one that has guardianship of an otherwise inanimate location or building, which is the one that knows?_

 _There are many scholars who state,_ Norrell began, as I soon surmised was his usual way of beginning, _that the Fae believe that all things are animate. All things, they say, have a soul – though not a soul as you or I would think of it, of course – which in a manner of speaking may be the same as each thing having a spirit attached, but that to me suggests not essential consciousness but an independent consciousness that is tied to an object or location. We can surmise that Uskglass himself would have believed in the idea of essential consciousness, and based his magic around it, but we live in more enlightened times, and if we are to return magic to its rightful place then I believe that we must write of enlightened magic._

 _You may well say that we live in more enlightened times, but in what you say I see no proof of it!_ (this was written on the back of Mr Norrell’s letter) _The Fae have more magic at their disposal than we have had since Uskglass himself, and I would say we could do a lot more wrong than following their example in this matter._

_We could do a lot more right, also! We cannot model modern magic on the old ways, for the surely self-evident reason that they are the old ways. They were created in, and for, a society which no longer exists. This was the problem that beset Argentine magicians – they were trying to resuscitate not only a way of magic but a way of life with it. We must make magic to fit our lives, or there will be no magic for the future._

_I would be happy to debate philosophy with you, Gilbert, when we are not supposed instead to be debating practicalities. I am not interested in what we should or should not do for the future – I am interested in what will work. If you cannot consult that library of yours and come out with an answer, then tell me so – do not cloud the issue with should-bes and maybe-sos._

I felt there was something beneath this last letter, and put it aside. It struck me, in a way that it had not before, to consider where John had been in all this. It was evident he had, at the very least, a fierce dislike for Jonathan Strange, and it was evident that he had a love, of some sort or another, for Gilbert Norrell. Had he been in Hurtfew, while Strange and Norrell had been – whatever they had been? Or was there something more deeply rooted than that?

I was seized by the desire to ride back to Hurtfew and ask Hannah for what she knew of them – to ask if the sympathy I felt for John, living in the house while his childhood friend drifted out of his reach, was justified, or a creation of my own.

But it was darkening outside, and I had no pretext. I would have to wait.

 

\--

 

I carried on sorting through Strange’s correspondence late into the night – in fact, I missed the call for dinner and fell asleep in among the papers. But I woke with pages of notes and a zest I had not felt since leaving York, and near flew downstairs to breakfast with a lightness that startled Zillah most dreadfully.

“You’re feeling well then, sir? With you missing tea last night we thought you must have still been poorly.”

I shook my head and beamed at her. “I am quite well, Zillah, thank you. But I have need of a large breakfast and as much coffee as you can supply, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Of course, sir,” she said, then curtseyed and vanished in the silent and bemusing way of housekeepers everywhere as I made my way to the dining room and sat down in front of what was, until Zillah returned, a rather conservative spread of toast, tea, and marmalade.

After ten minutes, during which I attacked the toast with a will, she brought in a large coffee jug, which, given how new it looked, was probably on its first outing, a plate of bacon, and a bowl of hard boiled eggs.

In truth I was mildly daunted, but I refused to let this be visible on my face and beamed again in thanks.

“It’s good to see such an appetite in the house again, Mr Segundus,” she said, making a delicate huffing sound that I realised afterwards was the closest she got to a laugh, “We haven’t made this many eggs since before Mr Strange disappeared.”

I saw my chance and took it, in an act of conversational deftness that I had missed being capable of.

“Mr Strange and Mr Norrell disappeared at the same time, did they not?”

“They did,” she said, putting the tray down and pouring me a cup of coffee.

“I take it they were friends.”

“Great friends – though you would not know it to hear them talk. They’d go at it hammer and tongs, they would.”

“And Mr Childermass?”

“Oh, no, he was abroad then. France, I believe.”

“I see,” I tried not to sound as deflated as I felt, and began to slice up an egg without the appetite I had had previously.

Zillah smiled tightly at me and swept out, giving me no choice but to consider the conversation ended.

In the end I managed to make a dent in the bacon and eggs, and I finished the coffee – which was possibly a mistake, since when I stood up from the table I was a little jittery.

I popped my head into the kitchen to offer my thanks, which startled everyone, and then I ran back upstairs to collect my notes before I left for Hurtfew. I managed to leave just as dawn was rising above the garden wall, and crossed the moor in great spirits. I almost broke into a gallop in a few places, and decided to ride up the road Hannah had spoken of rather than go straight to Hurtfew.

It was an overgrown road, now – I imagine that since Mr Strange and Mr Norrell had disappeared, there had not been enough carriages riding up and down it to keep the grass under control.

It was still clear enough to make my way along, and I reached the top of what I presumed was Penistone Crag without incident. I was startled to discover that it was much less tame than I had expected.

I had expected a small outcrop of rock; what I found was almost a gorge that dropped away in a fashion that one never would have suspected from a distance. A slim, windblown hawthorn tree twisted at the very edge of it, and I strayed no closer.

“Magician!” a voice echoed, booming in as reedy a way as I have ever heard anything boom.

I looked around hastily, confusing my poor horse most dreadfully, but I could see no-one. I wondered for a moment if I could have hallucinated it.

“Down here, magician!”

I frowned and dismounted, creeping closer to the edge. “Hello?”

“Closer!”

I braced myself and caught tight on one of the hawthorn’s thicker branches, looking down into the gorge.

There was a man at the very bottom of the gorge, but I could barely get a look at him before I was hit with a wave of vertigo and had to back off hurriedly.

I tripped over a root and slammed down on my back on the grass. I blinked at the sky for a moment, and then felt a little warm, rough wetness on my forehead as my horse investigated the issue with his tongue.

I clambered upright and mounted again, this time with the intention of finding my way to the bottom of the gorge. The road led downhill, which I had not realised before, and when I reached the bottom of it I looked about for another path. It took me a good few minutes to realise that what I had thought was just a break in the heather was a narrow footpath, and I headed carefully along it.

I realised as I approached that the gorge was more a deep cleft in the hillside – the opening was so narrow that you could easily miss it if you weren’t watching for it. The hawthorn tree, now a hundred yards or so above me, acted as something of a marker, and I rode through the gap with a sense of creeping coldness.

The man was waiting for me on an upturned, overgrown rock, and he leapt to his feet when he saw me. “Good day!” he shouted, at the same volume as he had used to make me hear him at the top.

“Good day,” I replied cautiously.

“You are the magician.”

I blinked. “I am John Segundus.”

He took off his hat, revealing a head of long, ragged hair that was beginning to go bald on top.

“And I am Vinculus.”

He looked like nothing more than the magicians I had seen in London; dressed in vibrant, though filthy, rags with a canny expression in his eyes.

“You are late for our appointment, magician,” he said, and I spluttered.

“I – I have never met you before. We have no appointment. You have me confused with someone-” I turned to leave, but somehow he got there before me and planted himself in front of my horse.

“I am Vinculus, magician of Threadneedle Street,” he said, “And it is written that we should meet.”

“Written? Written where?”

He grinned in an oily fashion. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“There is an appointment that I remember making that I will be late for, if you don’t get to the point.”

He laughed. “Always in a hurry, magician! But a version of me knows a version of you, sir! And for every version it is written that we must meet, for how else must the story start?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” I said, “Please let me pass.”

“Not yet, not yet. You must listen to my tale first. _Two magicians will appear in England_ -” he faltered, looked down to his sleeve cuff, pushed it back, frowned, and then his face cleared, “ _Two appeared in England. Two walked out of England and into darkness, and two must fetch them out again._ What do you think of that, magician? I think he ran out of inspiration after the first one.”

“I think it stuff and nonsense,” I said, “Let me pass.”

He raised a hand. “One more thing, magician! I have something of yours.” He rummaged in one of his many coat pockets, and pulled out a filthy scrap of paper. Then he grabbed my hand from my horse’s neck, turned it palm up, and pressed the scrap of paper into my hand.

“There! Now all appointments are ended, and the world can proceed as it should. Good day, magician!”

He stepped out of my way with an obnoxious bow, and I rode out of that gorge as if Hell itself were behind me.

 

\--

 

I galloped all the way back to Hurtfew, and near threw myself off my horse when Lucas appeared to take him.

“Is Hannah inside?” I panted.

He frowned at me. “She is, sir – are you quite alright?”

I barely heard his question, running as I was to the kitchen door.

“Hannah!” I shouted as I hopped up over the threshold, and she stood up from where she had been sitting at the kitchen table.

“John? Whatever’s the matter?”

“I need you to tell me I’m not dreaming.”

She frowned. “You’re not dreaming.”

“And that I’m not mad.”

“Well, I’m not so sure of that-”

“I just met a man below Penistone Crags who told me-”

“Vinculus,” she said, scowling, and I sighed in relief.

“Yes. Vinculus.”

“He owes me three chicken pies does that rag-sorcerer.”

I stumbled into the kitchen, and tugged a chair out to fall into it. Hannah laughed quietly, and patted my hand.

“He’s a right bastard, but he’s no hallucination. You’ll be reet, after you’ve got some coffee down you.”

I laughed, near hysterical with relief. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, “I’ve had three cups already.”

She smiled and shook her head. “No coffee, then.”

I rubbed my hands over my face. “I wouldn’t say no to a continuation of your story, though.”

“Oh, would you not?” she teased, but began.

              

\--

             

We were all in shock, I think, after his death. I remember how pale Jacob was when he stood at Cook’s side as she told us, and I remember that that was the first time I’d ever seen her cry. I remember how John just stood there, how Gilbert wavered on his feet, how John grabbed his arm and didn’t let him fall.

But after that I don’t really remember much – everything was a whirl of doctors and lawyers and letters from family no-one knew he had. I remember, though, that the wake was the first time I ever saw John and Gilbert screaming at each other. They’d barely quarrelled before, and any disagreement was cool and silent and sulky – this was something else entirely. They woke up the entire house with it, arguing about god-knows-what.

 _He won’t come back to us,_ Gilbert shouted, his voice thick with tears, _He won’t ever come back to us, not for anything_.

I don’t know what about that part stuck in my head but it did – there was something more underneath it, I thought then. I rationalised it out, later, but the idea that Gilbert was referring to someone else – or something else – stuck.

The funeral, though, was calm on their part. They hadn’t made up, but stood by each other’s side anyway. I stood just behind them, within reach of them should they need me but just far enough behind for propriety. Jacob stood away from us all, leaning against a tree that grew by the churchyard wall. He had a pipe in his hands, but never made up his mind to smoke it. He was still so pale – I thought the smoke might do him good.

The Lascelles family had also come, which we hadn’t expected – us, on one side of the grave, and they on the other. A few of those family members we’d never before known were milling around – most of them giving Jacob sour glances – but they were all of them mostly silent, saying nothing but general, vague statements of grief and condolence. But then Mr Lascelles piped up to say how tragic it all was, and how deeply he would miss his neighbour and friend, and that was when Jacob stood up straight, strolled over, and punched him.

Lascelles staggered but didn’t fall, and punched Jacob right back. One of Mr Haythornthwaite’s cousins pulled them apart before it could get any worse, handing Jacob a handkerchief and telling him to pull himself together. He walked away then, handkerchief against his nose, and never came back home.

The reading of the will came next, in a room above the pub. The room was so small that only blood relations were allowed in, but the door was left open and John and I crowded into the threshold.

Hurtfew, and half Mr Haythornthwaite’s fortune, was held in trust for Gilbert – who seemed the only person surprised by this. He had made no provision for who would take care of Gilbert after his death, however, and so that matter reverted to Gilbert’s father’s will, which named the cousins he was at that moment sitting between. John made no sign that he had heard this, though Gilbert certainly did. He was not one fond of crying in public, but he made an exception here. John noticed that alright – he started forward as soon as he heard Gilbert sniff – but I reached out a hand to stop him. In the eyes of the law, we weren’t family – if he tried to go to him, who knew what fuss would start.

But fuss started anyway. Starecross, the Lascelles’ debt with it, and the other half of the fortune, went into trust for “my ward, John Childermass,” and the room near shook with the force of the cousins’ outrage. They began shouting for this ward to be brought forward, for his quality to be put to them, for his worth to be analysed, but the lawyer winked at us and I dragged John away before it could become a mob.

I would not have done so, had I known that that would be the last time we saw Gilbert for ten whole years. His cousins took him away that evening, not stopping to let him pack his things, and we only found out the next morning when the lawyer came to talk to John. There was no provision for his further care, the lawyer told him, unlike Gilbert. The household had a stipend on which to survive until Gilbert was old enough to take it over, and John, if no-one stepped forward to take him, would be sent to an orphanage.

It was the butler that stepped forward. “The stipend includes full staff wages?”

The lawyer nodded.

“Then I suggest to you that the house needs a new groom, since Mr Ainsworth took over Jacob’s post as coachman. And I suggest that it would be cruel to take a boy from his house, to go among people he does not know.”

The lawyer winced, almost imperceptibly.

“Well, Master Childermass? Stay here as groom, or try your luck in an orphanage?”

“What do you think,” John snapped, and walked out of the parlour. He brushed past me as he did and I grabbed his hand, pulling him towards me to hug him. He bore it for a moment, still bristling with anger, and then stormed off out of the house.

The butler raised his eyebrows at the lawyer. “I think he should stay here, don’t you?”

“I don’t think anywhere else could hold him. He’s his father’s son, alright.”

The butler, for reasons I wasn’t sure of, laughed.

               

\--

 

We received one letter a week from Gilbert. I say we – it was always John they were addressed to. John, who had indeed taken on the duties of groom – though he still slept in his old room, and had the run of the house now – had fallen to new depths of silence, and the only time one could get more than five words out of him at once was on days when the letters arrived. I tried my damnedest to be as good a friend to him as I could, and while he would come to me with almost everything he never confided in me about Gilbert. And so I had no idea how he was – if he was in school or being tutored, if he was comfortable, if his cousins were pleasant. All I knew was that they were in Derbyshire, and that they had a library barely deserving of the name.

Years passed that way, somehow – at first I had thought it would be barely six months before Gilbert was on our doorstep. But six months went by, and then another six, and then John told me that Gilbert was at Eton with his cousin’s son and the younger Lascelles, and after that I gave up hope of him coming home.

But the longer it was, the more John seemed only to exist letter to letter. He filled his days with books, the moor, and the horses, but he drifted. He was growing sharper and more sour – he stopped watching his tongue and turned on anyone he felt like. He was only ever himself when the letters came.

But he lasted through his grief, and so did I. Hurtfew was far too empty to live in, and when John turned fourteen he asked if we could shut it up. I think we were all relieved that he asked – it was too much for us, too much to take care of when we had no-one to take care of it for – and so for the first time we closed off most of the house. John moved out of his room and into the servants’ quarters, sleeping in Jacob’s old room, and while he was still seeming to be strung from letter to letter, he spoke more and snapped less. It was as if, without the house to remind him, he had decided to embrace his position. He and I became the friends we hadn’t been for years, and the rest of the household began to tease us for it – we both didn’t mind. It was good to be close with him again, even if he still never shared what Gilbert wrote.

“It would worry you, Hannah,” he said when I asked, “We’re none of us who we were.”

I left it at that. Let John be cagy – Gilbert would come home eventually, and then I would see.

When John turned sixteen, we all seemed to come to the independent decision that he was in charge now – our butler had just retired and taken the housekeeper with him, and so, by degrees, John took on what we needed. Cook, who we all were still scared of – though less than before – managed the more immediate practicalities, but it was John who managed the finances and John who decided that the repayments of Mr Lascelles’ debt – which had been on hold since Mr Haythornthwaite died – should resume. He went through the family lawyers to give Mr Lascelles no recourse, and suddenly we had income that would not drain like the stipend would. With it, John promoted Cook up to housekeeper and me to cook – but we needed a maid, and that was when I met Dido.

She was from Aldwark, not far enough off to have no idea of our situation but far enough to have escaped most of it, and the youngest of a family which was famous in our part of Yorkshire. The Winthrops had never been rich like the Haythornthwaites, and had never seen a scandal in their ranks – but they were as old as the hills. The word went that they had been here long before the Raven King’s grandfather had even been born. I didn’t know how true it was, not being a member of one of the families that could have challenged it, but she arrived on our doorstep one summer morning and slipped into the house like she knew it. She was calm and very still, even in the face of John’s interrogation, and took to us like we were just another fixture of the moor. She flowed around us and our disagreements like wind, gentle here and fierce there – she pushed and pressed and changed our house to suit her without us even noticing, like the wind moving the weather.

I admit I can’t be the best chronicler here – I told you even I stopped paying attention while I was courting – but as far as I was watching, John was beginning to fall into his stride. He was calm and quiet and polite, having appeared to have dragged himself back from the scowling, bitter young man he could have been, and whenever I did step outside my own self-absorption to notice I was pleased for him, and proud. I didn’t know, then, about the articles he was writing for any magical publication that would take him – that came later. But now that I do know, it makes sense. John was always ferocious in some way or another, always convinced of the correctness of his own opinion, always convinced that there was injustice somewhere that he could make people see if only he could figure out what sarcastic remark to reveal it with. He had to channel that somewhere, if he wasn’t directing it at us.

But time passed while I wasn’t watching, and when the summer after my eighteenth birthday arrived, Gilbert came home.

 

\--

 

Hannah stood up then, muttering about how she had things to be getting on with – but I had heard a certain something in her tone, a sharpness that made me see, suddenly, that this was recent. Whatever hurt she was leading up to, it was still fresh. I did not make a noise as she left, though I started when I heard her shout to Mr Childermass that I was here. I stood up, the better to look as if I had only just arrived, and shifted my satchel to better get at the notes I wanted to share with him.

A scrap of paper floated to the floor when I stood, and I bent to pick it up. As soon as my hand closed over it I realised it was the paper that Vinculus had pressed into my hand, and I turned it over.

 _A Spell To Join Together Two Articles Which Have Been Parted_ , I read.

I stared at it for a good few minutes, but then I heard steps in the hallway and came back to myself just in time to stuff the paper into my pocket before Mr Childermass stepped into view and beckoned me to follow him.

He had a candle with him this time, and I was hit with a swimming sense of déjà vu. The light seemed to wake a queer sensation in the air and the strange light that I had noticed on my very first night, as if there were a fire burning or a window high in the wall, came back to war with the candle’s small, steadily flickering flame.

“The light is part of the magic,” I said.

He turned to me. “The light?”

“You can’t see it?”

“No.”

“It’s like the light is coming from two places at once.”

His eyes went distant, as if something had occurred to him, and then he came back to himself and turned away from me again.

This time it seemed like I could tell when we were approaching the study – there was a more solid feeling in the air, like the absence of a draught. There was an informality to the way he led me inside – a casualness that I presume came of his apparent growing ease with me – and we did not sit at the desk this time, but instead on the sopha in front of the fire.

“It is a cooler day,” he justified as he sat down, “Can’t be having our guests freezing.”

I smiled and took my papers out of my satchel so I wouldn’t crush them against the arm of the sopha.

“I discovered some of Jonathan Strange’s correspondence with Mr Norrell,” I said to the surprise on his face, “I made notes.”

“Copious notes.”

I blushed slightly. “Your own notes are brief, then?”

He laughed, warmly but quietly, and I felt the slightest sense of satisfaction. He twisted sideways and pulled one leg up under himself, resting his elbow on the back of the sopha.

“Tell me?” he asked, not reaching for my notes as I had expected him to.

I floundered for a second, mostly out of surprise, and then managed to pull myself together.

“Much of it is them discussing naming practices,” I said, “As well as various theories of animism. It appears that Mr Strange was also formulating a summoning spell – he and Mr Norrell took ten letters to make up their argument over it.”

This last I added to try and make him laugh again, but when I gained the courage to look at him I found him staring over my shoulder to the bookcase. He stood up, a distracted expression on his face, and went over to it. I tried not to let disappointment settle in the pit of my stomach as he flicked through a stack of slim periodicals and returned with one of the older looking ones. He sat, found the article he was looking for, and handed it to me.

 _On The North’s True King, by John C. Haythornthwaite_ , I read, and then noticed that he was indicating a paragraph halfway down the page.

_No king since John Uskglass has had the connection to magic that he had – this much is common knowledge. But not yet has the connection been made between the magic that he used and the land that he occupied. In these pages I argue that understanding the connection between the man and the land is essential to understanding his magic and vice versa – I also posit that this has implications that stretch into the modern political situation; the land knows no other king than he, and to force another king upon it shall always fail._

“It was called an argument for Northern devolution,” he said, a little bitterness in his voice, “But what you said, it reminded me –”

“You think Mr Norrell and Mr Strange may have been inspired by this?”

He paused, his mouth slightly open as if to speak. He blinked at me, as if it hadn’t occurred to him that it could have been that way.

“John?” I asked, concerned, and his first name appeared on my tongue without my notice.

Not, however, without his. His mouth snapped shut, his eyes widening.

“I’m sorry,” I said, hurriedly, “That was – that was inappropriate of me, I’m sorry-”

“You gave me permission to use yours,” he said, his voice low, “It is only fair that I give you the same permission.”

“I would not ask anything of you that you were uncomfortable with.”

“You are too gentle a man for this place, John Segundus,” he said, and I did not realise he had moved until I could feel the tips of his fingers against my wrist.

“I’m sorry,” I said, looking away from him and focusing on my knees. His hand shifted, his thumb rubbing slowly across the back of my hand.

“John,” he said, and I looked up, startled.

He looked as unsure as I felt, his eyes wide and dark. I turned my hand under his, and laced my fingers with his.

His breathing stuttered, very slightly.

I braced my other hand against the arm of the sopha and leant forward. I was certain I was misreading everything, but he hadn’t moved even an inch, hadn’t pulled his hand out of my grasp, and when I finally kissed him he groaned and tugged me close with his free hand.

There was the sound of crunching paper and a thud.

“My notes,” I said, pulling back just far enough to speak.

“Damn your notes.”

“Your periodical.”

“Damn that too,” he said, and I laughed, before he pulled me back against him and kissed me.

I clenched my hands in his waistcoat, shaking slightly, and was just trying to stretch out my last breath when we were startled apart by a sudden thud at the window. I looked up to see a dark shape fluttering away into the rain, and then looked back at him, expecting to be able to laugh – but there was a frozen look to his expression, and I pulled my hands away.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, “I’m sorry.”

“Go,” he said, without force, and I ran from the room burning with embarrassment.


	6. Chapter Six

Gilbert returned without fanfare, late on a mid-July night. He had sent no word of his coming back – even John had not had a letter from him since April. But there came a knock on the front door, the door we had long since barred and bolted, not long off midnight, and when I went out to see who it was I saw a small young man balled up in furs and I knew.

“Gilbert,” I said, standing at the bottom of the steps and staring.

He turned, and in the dim and thinly stretched light of my lamp I saw his face for the first time in seven years. His jaw had lengthened slightly, his cheeks thinned, his eyes sunk. But he was there still, the boy I had known, even if he was trying to hide it under a bad wig and a thick coat.

“Gilbert Norrell,” I repeated.

“Hannah,” he said, in a voice that startled me with its lower pitch.

“It’s been a long time.”

“It has.”

“We missed you.”

He had slowly been descending the steps as we spoke, and at that he stopped in front of me and blinked.

He was shorter than me, I noticed, feeling a little absurd.

“I-” he started, and stopped.

I wanted, very badly, to hug him. But he was standing very still, holding himself tight, and I had the feeling that if I hugged him he wouldn’t take it well.

“Welcome home,” I said, instead, and led him around to the kitchen door. It was the anniversary of Mr Haythornthwaite’s death, and John and I had been unable to sleep – we had set ourselves up in the kitchen instead, and I had just been about to make cocoa when the knock had come. John, when I led Gilbert inside, stood; the blood drained from his face, and he jerked forward.

“Gilbert,” he said, exactly as I had.

Gilbert breathed out, slowly. “John,” he whispered, as if the name pained him.

I slipped away from them, and started to make the cocoa. They didn’t need me in their reunion. But out of the corner of my eye I saw John step forward again, leaving them within a breath of each other. He reached out as if to take Gilbert’s hands and Gilbert looked down at them, trailing his fingers across John’s palms.

“Your hands are rough,” he said.

“A groom needs rough hands,” John replied, without reproof but with some kind of hollowness in his voice that I couldn’t place, “Your uncle’s will-”

“I remember.”

John dropped his hands. “Gilbert-”

“I was picturing you a gentleman,” Gilbert said, and I winced. It wasn’t meant to hurt, I could hear that, but I heard John’s sharp breath, too, and the way he slammed the back door as he stormed out onto the moor was like a slap to both of us.

“Sit down,” I said, and Gilbert didn’t move. “ _Sit down_ ,” I repeated.

“I am the master in this house, you cannot-” he started, not sounding so sure of it, and I spun around.

“It’s your uncle pays my wages still, Gilbert Norrell, and it’s John as made sure it came in steady. Sit down.”

Finally, he sat, and once I had finished with the cocoa I pushed a cup into his hands.

“Did you come home just to sneer at us?”

“I-”

“Far as I see it, if that’s your notion, you may as well have just stayed gone. We did well enough without you-”

“Living on my money!”

“Firstly, it’s yours and John’s both-”

“He has no right to it, he isn’t blood-”

“Did Henry Lascelles feed you that?”

“I have come back to claim what’s mine,” he said, “Henry only opened my eyes.”

“Aye, I’ll bet!”

“You can’t talk to me like that!”

“I can talk to you however I damn well like!”

“I am the master of this house, you are only servants, you cannot-”

“Counting John in our number, are you?”

“Yes!”

I blinked at him, and in the sudden silence I heard the slightest scuff of feet against the threshold.

“God help you, Gilbert Norrell,” I said, “Because I won’t.”

 

\--

 

The next morning, Jacob visited the house. He wouldn’t come in, but insisted on seeing me. He told me he had seen John riding through town in the early hours of the morning, headed along the York road. I attempted to get him to come in and explain, or at least come in and have tea, but he refused and left – I started to go after him, but stopped. I should tell everyone, I thought, rather than leave them in suspense, and Jacob could take care of hisself no matter how much it didn’t look like it.

I gathered all the servants in the kitchen to tell them, saving Gilbert for last. Perhaps it was – no, it _was_ cruel of me, I admit that, but I was eighteen and still furious. But by the time I found him – in the library, of course – much of my fury had worn off into worry.

“John’s gone,” I said, from the doorway. Gilbert had his back to me, sitting on the footstool right in front of the fireplace. He didn’t look up.

“Gilbert?” I walked closer, until I was standing just behind him. He was fiddling with a deck of cards, and I frowned. They were nothing like any deck I had seen before, and looked hand drawn.

“I found them in the desk,” he said. He sounded like he hadn’t slept. “They were his. He told me – I said they wouldn’t work, I told him magic was dead, I said-” he stopped.

“He didn’t listen.”

“Did he ever?”

“He did last night.”

Gilbert flinched, and I reached out to steady him. “I didn’t mean it,” he whispered, so quietly that I had to strain to hear him.

“I know.”

He took a deep breath, and turned his head to look at me. He blinked, and looked away again.

“I love him, Hannah.”

“I know you do.”

“His letters – he made everything bearable.”

I squeezed his shoulder gently. “Then why did you-”

“I don’t _know!_ ”

I stepped back and sat down in the armchair. “Gilbert-”

He cleared his throat. “I’m going to need the house opening back up, and two more rooms made up. We’re going to be having guests next week.”

“Do you really think that’s wise, after-”

“I invited them months ago. I can’t cancel now.”

“I never said you should cancel, but you could put them off for a week or two.”

“No. They’ll be here on Wednesday.”

I sighed and shrugged to myself. “Fine. Of course, with John gone, we’ll be short staffed, but I’ll get it done,” I stood up and started to walk away, but I stopped after a few paces. “Sir,” I added, with every bitterness.

 

\--

 

Gilbert’s guests arrived late on the Wednesday, in the middle of a pouring summer storm. We’d not managed to open the whole house, but everything that made the house presentable was opened. Dido, Lucas, Davey and I had been run off our feet to get it ready, but ready it was and just in time.

I refused to watch for them to arrive, saying I was busy with the spread Gilbert insisted I put on – and I was, but not so busy that I couldn’t have spared a few minutes to peer out of the parlour window when Lucas flew in to tell us they were here.

“Two red-haired men,” he said, when I asked what they were like, “The only difference is the length of their noses.”

I laughed, but I was uneasy. I’d only seen the younger Lascelles at the funeral, but he had been the spit of his father even then, and if Gilbert knew him at Eton well enough for first names then perhaps he knew him well enough to invite home. I shuddered to think of it, and for the first time I was glad John wasn’t here. He had always hated the both of them.

It was hardly what Gilbert wanted, but I had decided that he owed me, and so I roped Dido and Davey into serving the meal when the time came – I couldn’t bear to risk seeing Lascelles, if it was indeed him. If he was owt like his father, and chances were he was, then he’d make some comment about John, and I had the chilling sense that Gilbert would agree with whatever he came out with. I stayed in the kitchen, and lied to any that asked that the wine on the side was for cooking with.

I ignored Gilbert shouting for me, and I ignored the summons he sent Dido with. He could do without me for one night, whatever it was he wanted.

 

\--

 

I managed to avoid Henry Lascelles for the few days that he stayed; he left for church on Sunday morning, and went home to Starecross afterwards. But I could not have avoided Jonathan Strange. He stormed around Hurtfew every day he spent within its walls; he rang for us as if we were his own servants, and he fought with Gilbert as if there were no tomorrow. Not that Gilbert seemed to mind – he gave as good as he got, and most days the library echoed with their disagreements. They always had the tenor of something long-trodden, and Dido and I often said Eton with them both in it must have been an experience.

He was tall and very much a sweeping kind of man; he had an open, genial kind of face, but soured it with a certain arrogance - and his arrival marked the first time in my life I was seen in terms of what paid my wages. It was not that I was unhappy or uncomfortable; but to Jonathan Strange I was a cook and that only. I had always been Hannah first; but Strange gave no indication that he considered I may be in possession of a given name. Once, while I was serving breakfast, he began referring to me as _Mrs_ , and floundered for a surname – he had not asked, and I was disinclined to offer him one without his asking. Dido, however, stepped in with her own.

“Mrs Winthrop,” he said, as if he had always known – and when Gilbert looked up from his reading at the breakfast table, I winked.

He blushed, and glanced at Mr Strange. For a moment I thought I had read him wrong – but I had never read Gilbert Norrell wrongly in all my life, and I went cold. Not even a month after John had left, and he was already replacing him.

 

\--

 

I came close to leaving, once or twice, in those early months. But Hurtfew was my home – I barely remembered having any other – and I was loath to leave what I knew simply because I disliked the man Gilbert was choosing to associate with.

“This Haythornthwaite,” Strange said, one day, when he and Gilbert were sorting through their post at the breakfast table, “He’s a relation of yours?”

Gilbert didn’t look up, though I saw him stiffen. “A distant cousin,” he said.

“He has another article in the Edinburgh Review. On Uskglass.”

I very nearly dropped the teapot I was holding. There were no other Haythornthwaites as far as I knew – Gilbert’s uncle was the last of the line. But using that name to write about magic – it could only be John. He had tried to keep his studies from me, but I had seen the books he was buying and the notes he scrawled. I knew him too well for him to keep a secret that huge.

“He seems to be inferring that there is the possibility that magic is – well, that it is still possible.”

“I was of the belief you would be suited well by that.”

Strange made an unconvinced hum, and Gilbert stretched out a hand for the journal. “Let me see.”

Strange handed it over, and picked up the cup of tea I had poured for him. “He’s very…Northern.”

Gilbert looked up again, raising an eyebrow. “I would remind you where we are.”

“But it is not that. It is English magic, not Northern magic! This article, it’s – it’s downright insular.”

“English magic is Northern magic, Jonathan. Besides,” Gilbert resettled his glasses, “He raises a good point, about the knowledge of the land-”

“Oh, I daresay,” Strange waved a dismissive hand, “But why should it be that, for instance, the trees of Ashfair should not have a connection to the Raven King? No other king has engaged with the natural world in the same way, and if it is as Lanchester says and the trees have memories of their own-”

“It is accepted fact, not merely Lanchester’s opinion-”

“Oh, yes, he can do no wrong, I know-”

“I did not say that.”

“-then surely they would remember, and know him?”

“You know the name of the King of Spain, do you not? Do you owe him fealty just as you do King George?”

“That is not the question at all!”

“On the contrary, it is exactly the question! To the south he is _a_ king – to the north he is _the_ king. That is all this article implies, not some – some revolution in the making.”

“But in magic, he is the only king that counts.”

“In English magic. There are other magics.”

“Well naturally I speak of English magic!”

“Do you? I would have thought you risked talking of Welsh magic, with the trees of Ashfair.”

“Firstly that was an example, and secondly you are being intentionally contrary.”

Gilbert shook his head, but didn’t reply, and I noticed that he was gripping the journal so tightly that the pages were beginning to bend. Perhaps it was not so much a matter of replacing, then, I thought, and felt myself soften.

I rested my hand against his back as I passed, and he let go of the journal.

 

\--

 

Something shifted in Gilbert after that. His arguments with Strange, once mostly confined to the library, began to spill over into the rest of the house, and began to be rather less obliquely about magic. Half the time, he and Strange were at loggerheads over one thing, and then they would switch sides and continue fighting but in the opposite direction. Every time a journal was delivered to the house there would be an article for them to fight over, some new theory or some old theory dressed as new.

It was coming up on November when things changed. I don’t know what started it – some chapter in some book, some article or paper or some such – but they were back to their argument about John Uskglass and John’s article when I walked into the parlour to bring Gilbert his tea and Strange his brandy.

“- you _have_ a king!” Gilbert was shouting, “You don’t need him! You are not one of his subjects, you didn’t spend weeks trying to call him back, you don’t _know –_ ”

Every light in the room, from the candles to the steady fire, flared and then went out as if doused.

Gilbert’s mouth shut with a click that echoed in the sudden silence.

“Gilbert,” Strange started, sounding not as shocked as I was expecting.

“I know.”

“It’s not a coincidence this time.”

“I know.”

“You-”

“I _know._ ”

I slipped out to fetch another candle and the spill, and didn’t hear anything more.

 

\--

 

The next morning, Strange left. He went without notice, packing a few things in the small space between his waking and breakfast, barely spoke during the meal except to assure Gilbert that yes, he would write, and rode away after he had eaten. Gilbert vanished into his library, and I followed.

“Gilbert,” I said as I closed the door behind me.

He put down the book he was obviously only pretending to read, and looked up at me. “Are you making this a habit? I’m perfectly fine.”

“You fled.”

“I wanted to look something up before I forgot it.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You forget that I know you, Gilbert.”

“I would have thought you would be happy to see him go.”

“I don’t like him, but I like you being hurt even less.”

“I’m not hurt-”

“He left because you did magic.”

“Hannah, please.”

“You did magic, Gilbert.”

He looked down and laughed slightly. “Much good it did me.”

I reached behind me for the door handle, and opened the door. “Write to John,” I said as I left, “Didn’t you say it helped?”

 

\--

 

He did write to John, he told me, or at least, not knowing his address, he wrote to him care of the Edinburgh Review – and then he wrote again, and again. Each one would come back, staring up unopened from the tray in the hall. It was hurting him more than silence had, anyone could see that. And in his hurt he settled; he had us shut the main house back up again, and on days when he wasn’t eating in the library at some ridiculous hour he sat quietly at the kitchen table with us. The only quarrel he had was our habit of keeping the door open. He complained, low-voiced, about a draught even on windless days.

I couldn’t stand it. There was no life in him – quiet as he always had been, there had always been something keeping him from listlessness. I’d rather have had Strange back than live with this Gilbert forevermore.

A week and a half after Gilbert’s third letter was returned, while he was asleep, I went into the library.  The journals were easy enough to find, all on one shelf alone – I picked up the latest and found John’s name in the contents, or rather, the name he was using, next to the title of his article. I found him again in the next, and the next. He had an article in every journal, and in every case it was about magic in some form. I sank to the floor and sat there on the rug to think, and I was still there when the door creaked open behind me and Gilbert came in.

“Hannah?” he asked, sounding entirely bewildered.

I beckoned him over, and he came, sitting down beside me. He didn’t say a word about his journals on the floor, which was possibly the most unsettling marker of his mental state yet.

“He’s writing to you,” I said.

“Hannah, he won’t reply-”

“He’s writing to you,” I repeated, “He’s been writing to you all along.”

 

\--

 

The next time a journal appeared at the house, he opened it at the kitchen table. He flicked it open as if he knew where to look without checking, and read with his hands shaking.

Then he pushed the journal across the table to me, tapping his finger against the title of the article.

_The Development of Disappearance as a Motif in Argentine Literature: In Response to a Letter to the Editor._

_\--_

From that day on Gilbert started to brighten; he spent just as much time in his library writing quarrelsome letters to the Edinburgh Review as he did researching magic. I sneaked a read here and there, and laughed aloud when I found the queries pages full of Gilbert and John arguing – ostensibly – about magic. Perhaps arguments about magic is what passes for courting in Gilbert’s head, Dido said when I told her.

I would have gone as far as to say things were going well – they had been going well for four editions of the Review, at least – when the elder Mr Lascelles finally succumbed to ill health and died. Perhaps it is cruel, but not one of us mourned, and Gilbert flatly refused to go to the funeral. But Lascelles the younger came up from London, and with him came Jonathan Strange. According to the letter he sent, that Gilbert in a fit of frustration bade me read, he did not wish his friend to mourn alone and so he would be staying at Starecross for the foreseeable future. He would welcome a resumption of their previous friendship, he wrote, and in aid of such he was, on behalf of their mutual friend, inviting Gilbert to Starecross.

Gilbert, unable to do anything else, went. He returned a few weeks later, bright-eyed but snappish. His letters to the magazine didn’t slow – in fact they became more frequent, and included a few that were care of the magazine rather than directly to the editor, but they were accompanied by letters to Strange at Starecross, and the longer it went on the more snappish Gilbert became.

Then, a journal arrived without one of John’s articles in it, and Gilbert shut himself in the library. He would not answer to my shouting, or Dido’s entirely reasonable, soft-spoken requests. He stayed there all day, and all of the next day too – on the third day, I lost patience and fetched Mr Strange.

Strange he answered the door to, if only because he threatened to throw himself at the door until the hinges broke. I admired his directness, but the implication I couldn’t stand and so I decided that the house couldn’t go another day without supplies from the village and I left.

I burned off the frustration before I even got halfway across the moor, but carried on anyway – I might drop in on Jacob while I was there, I thought. With new and rather more sustaining purpose, I arrived in town in good time, saw Jacob before the inn was filled up with people wanting lunch, and headed back with enough food in my basket to make good on my excuse.

I was halfway back when I heard a voice calling my name, and I turned. There was a tall, greatcoated figure on a horse about a hundred yards behind me on the road, and my heart stuttered.

“John!” I shouted.

He dismounted, took off his coat and came closer, smirking.

“Miss me?” he asked, a rasp in his voice that hadn’t been there before, and I very nearly slapped him. But I had my hands full, so I didn’t.

“It’s about time you came home,” I said, looking at him with my sternest expression.

He filled out his clothes more than he used to, and he looked like he’d caught rather too much sun – and a few fists, if the new twist in his nose was anything to go by.

“I thought so.”

“You gave us all a fright, you know, and for you never to even write to me-”

His smirk grew.

“Bastard,” I said, and he laughed aloud – but he stopped almost immediately, silenced by the sound of new hoofbeats.

“Mrs Winthrop!” hollered Jonathan Strange, and suddenly he was there behind me. “You are not being troubled, I hope?”

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.

“I’m a friend of the household,” John said, his voice stiff, “And you are?”

“My name is Jonathan Strange. Misters Norrell and Lascelles are great friends of mine.”

“Are they, now.”

“I would, of course, be willing to carry to them whatever message it is that has brought you.”

John paused for a long second, tipping his head slightly. “I think this is a message best carried myself, thank you.”

Mr Strange scowled very slightly. “I will not be addressed with such insolence by such as you.”

I expected John to ball his fists – in fact, if I hadn’t my hands full I would have reached out to try and calm him – but he only smiled. “You ought to be more aware of your own tongue, Mr Strange. You don’t know to whom you talk.”

“I shall not allow my friends to be troubled by rogues.”

“It is only Mr Norrell I wish to trouble. Mr Lascelles is enough trouble alone, without me adding to it.”

“You will have respect for your betters-”

“Yes, when I find some.”

“John, please,” I said, barely above a breath. He didn’t even look at me.

Mr Strange began to raise a hand, as if to slap him, and then let it fall. John smirked.

“I think Mr Norrell should know that his friend nearly assaulted his uncle’s ward, don’t you?”

Strange laughed aloud. “Oh! So that is your message! Tell me – are you short of money, is that why you returned? Do you feel the need to snatch his fortune from under him, as you did before? To poison more minds against him? I shall not allow it. Gilbert should wash his hands of you.”

John’s expression in response was painfully sharp. “In that case, tell _Gilbert_ that he need not trouble himself with letters any longer,” he said. He turned and began walking back to his horse. I dropped my basket and ran after him.

“John,” I started, grabbing his jacket. He turned around, a vague and worrying wildness in his eyes.

“Let go, Hannah, please. He has.”

“But it isn’t true, I know it isn’t-”

“Hannah. Please.”

I let go. He mounted his horse, and rode away with a studied casualness. I turned back, pulling my shawl closer around my shoulders, and picked my basket up again.

“I am sorry that you had to see that, Mrs Winthrop. May I offer you a ride home?”

I looked up at him, gritting my teeth against the tears that were threatening.

“Fuck you,” I said.

 

\--

 

I got back to the house even more angry than I had left it, tossed the basket onto the kitchen table, and ran up the stairs to the library. I slammed open the door, startling Gilbert into looking up.

“Hannah?” he asked, “Hannah, what’s the matter?”

“This is _your fault_ ,” I said. It came out more like a scream, and he blanched, “You, you and your, your _airs_ – he would never have left if you had just – if you had been kind, for once! But no, you had to act like Lascelles and you drove him away-”

There was a creak from behind me, and I spun around to see Jonathan Strange rising out of the armchair near the fire. “Now, Mrs Winthrop, perhaps you should calm down-”

“I thought I told you to go to hell.”

“ _Hannah!”_

“Don’t you dare,” I said, more softly, “You know, Gilbert, you had a chance. He was coming back. He wasn’t even a mile away. _He was coming back to you_ , and you still somehow managed to push him away! And you know what? I don’t blame him! He deserves better than you, Gilbert Norrell-”

“I know he does.”

That stopped me in my tracks. I stopped mid breath, my arms folded tightly across my chest, standing between Gilbert and Strange.

“I know he does,” Gilbert repeated, “But – Hannah, I would never – I have tried so hard to make amends – how, why would I drive him away again?”

I swallowed. “Ask your new beau,” I said, my voice hoarse from shouting. I was tempted to stay, especially seeing the look on Gilbert’s face as he stared past me to Strange, but I couldn’t bear it, and so I left.

 

\--

 

Things changed, after that. Strange shared his time evenly between Starecross and Hurtfew, and he was different, when he was around. More distracted, and quieter – he was more polite with us all, me especially – I suppose swearing at a man has that affect, especially when he’d probably never been sworn at by a servant before. I began, after a couple of weeks, to find it easier to turn a blind eye to the nights when Strange did not return to Starecross, knowing now that Gilbert didn’t expect a third chance at John returning. It was easier to see him seeking – whatever it was he was seeking, warmth or happiness or company, now that John had walked away with such finality.

He was not returning to us. I had not expected that to be easier than the possibility that maybe one day he would come back, but it was.

There were still articles, but they were less frequent, and I never saw Gilbert read one. He and Strange argued about magic just as much as they ever had, but when Gilbert spoke there was a hollowness in him – an unease that went perhaps not all the way to grief, but at least part of the way. Strange seemed unfazed by it, and for that more than anything I began to view him with more ambivalence than before.

He was concerned for Gilbert, I could see that, and as time went on he spent less and less time at Starecross. I gathered, from Zillah, that Strange and Lascelles had quarrelled, loudly and at length. It was good riddance, I thought. Lascelles had never been salvageable, but this quieter, politer Strange was tolerable.

But his letting go of Lascelles seemed to change things between them – there was a growing sense of tension, as if his influence had kept something from boiling over. We were approaching winter by this point, and at first I discounted the tension as a storm growing, some kind of pressure in the atmosphere that would soon give way.

But then I realised it was not the weather. Gilbert was growing paler, more gaunt, and Strange the same. The air creaked and crackled around them, even I could tell that, and Gilbert especially moved as if he wasn’t quite there, as if he were walking through a world that just happened to overlap with ours.

On the last day of October, Lascelles came to the house. Both stayed into the library to receive him, and the door had barely closed behind him when the weather broke. I was under the impression he had come to apologise, but he must have made a terrible job of it, for the arguments that rang through the house that night were as fierce as the storm, and Lascelles grew frustrated enough that he ignored my warnings and left the house while the storm was still screaming outside. There was a lull, after he left, in their argument, and I relaxed when I heard it, thinking that I had been right the first time, and that once the storm was over we would all be returned to ourselves – but it was not so.

It was when the storm cleared that we discovered that Gilbert and Mr Strange were gone.

 

\--

 

She sat back in her chair, folding her arms across her chest. Her eyes were a little watery, but she didn’t cry; Dido had her hand on her shoulder and was squeezing gently.

“There you are,” Hannah said, “That’s the story. Turned out the next day that Lascelles had never got home, either – the coroner declared he’d lost his way on the moor. I found John’s address in Gilbert’s papers a few days later and wrote to him – he came back about a week after the inquest. Shame that’s what it took for him to stay.”

Dido whispered something to her, and I reached out to touch her hand.

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said, “It’s hardly what you need, after John upsetting you – I wish I could have told a more pleasant story.”

“I appreciate it all the same,” I said, though something was beginning to nag at me. There was something she had said that made almost too much sense, something that was ticking over in my head but I couldn’t quite place it.

“I have to go,” I said, suddenly – I stood up and ran into the corridor, my feet echoing in the small space. It twisted and wound, and all around me I could hear voices; the air was thick in my throat and hard to breathe, and I grew quickly disorientated. It felt almost as if thorns were catching at my ankles, at my wrists. I heard, clearly, Hannah shouting – and then her voice was lost in a crowd of other voices, Jonathan Strange’s, a reedy, soft voice I thought must be Gilbert’s, the screaming of a crow and the rushing of the wind.

I crashed into a solid chest and the voices stopped.

“John?”

I staggered back, blinking in startlement.

“I was coming to apologise-”

“No,” I said, “It’s alright, I understand-” I grabbed his wrist and dodged around him, pulling him along behind me, “I have an idea – something Hannah said – I think we can get them back-”

I broke off, for we had reached the study door – it stood ajar, belching light into the corridor, and I dragged him inside, closing the door behind me.

“What is this,” he started, and I waved him off, digging in my pocket until my hand closed around the scrap of paper Vinculus had pressed upon me.

I handed it to him, and he looked at it with disbelief. “Where did you get this?”

“Vinculus.”

Understanding dawned in his eyes. “I knew he’d stolen more than Hannah’s chicken pies. But-”

“ _Gilbert moved as if as if he were walking through a world that just happened to overlap with ours,_ ” I quoted, “It occurred to me – you see him, yes?”

“Yes.”

“His ghost, Strange’s ghost, the way the light comes from two places at once, seeing him in the mirror, the house moving around us – what if,” I paused to properly assemble my thoughts, “What if the world is in two pieces, magic and mundane or Fairie and England or light and darkness – and what if – what if Norrell and Strange made the worlds become unanchored, what if they got stuck on the wrong side-”

“And if we join together the worlds again-” There was, as he trailed off, the first flicker of true hope in his eyes.

“Then we can bring them home.”

There was the sound of crinkling paper as John closed his fist around the paper. For a second I thought he was about to kick me out again, but he just opened his fist again and went over to the desk, dropping the paper onto his blotting pad and almost falling into the chair.

“What do we need?” I asked, for I had never given the paper a proper look.

John had closed his eyes, his hands pressed tightly against his mouth. He took his hands away, but didn’t open his eyes.

“A silver basin. Fresh water. The pieces of that which are to be joined. Something with which to bind them.”

I followed his lead and sat down on the sofa, my foot catching against my satchel. I bent down and picked it up, tidying my papers and putting them back in the satchel.

“We would need to use symbols to act as each piece,” he said, almost too quietly for me to hear.

“That would work?”

“It should. I wrote an article on the theory of it once – of course, Gilbert sent a letter to the _Review_ ripping it apart, but it’s a sound principle.”

“Is there anything you would suggest?”

There came the noise of shifting fabric, and though I could not see him I presumed he shrugged.

“Beech trees are connected to Fairie-”

“So are most trees. And I – I scried for them. They are not there.”

“But the other world-”

“Is not just Fairie, Mr Segundus. We need something to symbolise the whole of it.”

“Mirrors?” I asked, twisting around to look at him, “They are the medium of travel, are they not? Where the world flows in and out again.”

He nodded. “That can be what binds them,” he said, his voice growing hollow. He stood up and went to the window, staring out at the moor. “The bowl is mirrored,” he whispered, “And there is nowt more English than the rain-”

“John?”

He spun around to face me, a wildness lighting up his face. “We have it,” he said, “Or almost – we only need something to symbolise where they are, the magic that they used-”

I stood up, feeling as if in a trance, and drifted my way over to the desk. I picked up the spell and smoothed it out between my hands. “Something to symbolise magic, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Were it possible I would suggest the library, but as it is not-” I folded the paper carefully in half, and then stepped over to stand in front of him.

“Use this,” I said, taking his hand and pressing the spell into his hand.

He stared at me, closing his fingers around it. “Are you certain?”

“I don’t see why it couldn’t work,” I said, “And you not immediately objecting suggests you don’t, either.”

He didn’t reply, and I stepped back.

“I will fetch your bowl of rainwater,” I said, and walked out of the study.

 

\--

 

I confess I was not so good a man as I should have been; I was quieter and colder than I had hoped I would be. As much as I understood – and I was not deceiving myself that I did – and as short a time as I had known him, as materially invested as I was in his and Gilbert’s story, it hurt that it came so close on the heels of an intimacy I had had hopes for.

I fetched a large jug from Hannah and went outside, into the rain that was beginning to throw itself down with force. She tried to beseech me to take a coat, but I refused. I was tempted to sit on the garden bench while I waited for the jug to fill – the overhang from the stonework above had kept the bench mostly dry. But something drew me to the garden gate, and out onto the moor – I could see the Crags, where I had met Vinculus, and in the far distance, made insubstantial by the rain, a church steeple.

There was a soft croaking and I looked up; a raven was walking back and forth along the top of the wall. I felt the vague need to salute, or bow – but the jug was heavy enough to need two hands, so I only dipped my head.

The raven screamed and flew off, towards the distant church. I leant back against the wall, beside a gorse bush that still had some tiny yellow flowers – saved by the shelter of the wall and the nearby warmth of the house.

Rainwater ran down over my face, tickling as it poured down the side of my nose. My hair was quickly sodden and clung tightly to my skin, and my shoulders grew cold with damp. The rain rang and echoed as it landed in the jug, discordant but satisfying. I looked up to the house, trying to see if I could tell from outside which was the study – warm firelight lit the window of a room on the second floor, just to the left of the kitchen – but there was light too coming from another room on that floor, just a few windows away. It was a cooler light, broken by shadows flickering back and forth in the window, and I stared at it until I felt a stream of water run over my hand and found the jug overflowing and the rain falling hard enough to threaten a storm.

I hurried through the gate and into the garden, trying not to spill any water, and Hannah held the kitchen door open for me before locking it tightly.

“He’s wanting you,” she said, helping me to balance the bowl with the jug and then ushering me into the corridor, “Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Would I ever?”

“Don’t make me answer that. Go. Good luck.”

I nodded, then succumbed to temptation and kissed her cheek. “Thank you, Hannah,” I said, and hurried off towards the study.

This time, there were no thorns, no voices – nothing but a strong draught that whipped around me and pressed at my shoulders. I felt, a few times, that I could hear whispering in the wind – Vinculus’s voice, perhaps – but I discounted it as a fancy, and with the house on my side I made it to the study quickly.

John opened the door just as I got there, and pulled me inside by my upper arm. He took the bowl from me and put it down on the newly clear desk, and instructed me to pour the water in, which I did in as steady a stream as I could. The close, harsh smell of rain filled the room, and the firelight flickered.

John looked at me and swallowed. “I am sorry,” he whispered, “I had not meant to cause you harm.”

I put the jug down and reached out, trailing my fingertips across the back of his hand. “You did not,” I said, “But I hardly think now is the time.”

He looked down at the water, and then at the spell. A slow, ironic smile began to spread across his face, and he reached up, taking my chin in his hand.

“You are freezing,” he said.

“Odd, since I didn’t just spend ten minutes outside in a storm.”

He wiped a few growing droplets from my skin with his thumb, and kissed me. I couldn’t move, bursting with bitterness and hope both, and he let go of me after only a moment.

“John,” we both said at the same time, and laughed softly.

He stepped back and ran one hand through his hair. He reached to take the spell but his hand faltered and his breathing changed, becoming slightly too rapid, slightly too shaky.

 “Would you rather I did it?” I asked, and he nodded quickly.

I took the spell, remembering Vinculus’s words as I did. “Two walked into darkness,” I said, “Two must fetch them out again.”

John’s breath caught, but I didn’t look at him. I laid the spell against the surface of the water and watched it darken and sink, the ink blurring and lifting out of the parchment.

“Place your hand over the water,” John said, and I did, stretching out my fingers until the shadow of my hand covered the whole surface. So shadowed it was that I could see neither parchment or ink, and I took a deep breath of the musty, rain filled air.

I was expecting a roll of thunder or the flash of lightning, but the storm did not oblige me. With a sigh of defeat, I took my hand from over the basin.

The water was clear, and the parchment had gone. John, wide-eyed, reached into the water and trailed his fingers over the bottom of the basin. Then he grabbed arm with the other hand and pressed my hand into the water so that I could feel the impression of letters on the bottom.

I froze, my wrist still in his grip, and blinked at him.

“You did it, John,” he said, and I slowly pulled away from him.

“But-” I began, before being interrupted by a loud, echoing boom.

“Thunder?” I asked, and John shook his head.

“Not thunder,” he said, and then with a sudden jerk of movement he ran out of the study. I followed, barely noticing as I did that the corridor was wider and lighter, that it was perfectly straight, that it led to a sensibly broad flight of stairs.

“Lucas!” John shouted as he ran down the stairs and burst through the kitchen door, “Lucas, get me the crowbar.”

I caught up to him to see Lucas blinking in confusion, and Hannah and Dido looking at each other with concern.

“John, love, maybe you should calm down-” Hannah started.

“Now, Lucas!”

Lucas blinked at him for another moment and then jumped into movement, running outside and then coming back a few minutes later, soaking wet, with a crowbar in his hands. John snatched it from him and then pushed past me, running back up the stairs. I followed, Hannah just behind me, past the study until we reached a huge, heavy set of doors with a plank nailed across them.

John jammed the crowbar in and heaved, Lucas darting forwards to help.

There came another boom as they tried to get the doors open, and suddenly I recognised it for what it was – someone was on the other side of the door.

I reached back and grasped Hannah’s hand; she squeezed, hard.

After a long, tense moment, the nails gave and the doors banged open.


	7. Epilogue

_1802 –_ I have returned to Yorkshire. I left under the impression that the county needed me no more – but I received, a few weeks ago, a letter from John Childermass. In it, he told me that he had heard something from Hannah Winthrop that was of great interest, and that he offered me the occupancy of Starecross Grange for a few weeks while we discussed it.

Mr Honeyfoot, having heard the whole of the story I encountered the last time I was here, seemed torn between encouraging me to return and encouraging me to stay in Lancashire, where I had found employment as a magical tutor – but my charges, soon after I received the letter, were sent to a nearby boarding school and so I found myself unemployed.

There seemed, after that, no real reason not to go, and so I sent my acceptance of his offer and set off once I had made arrangements with my landlady for my things to be kept in storage for me.

The Yorkshire I returned to was just as I had left it, if a little drier and slightly less cold – the moors still stretched for as far as I could see, the sky wide, gray and dramatic. The hawthorn tree of Penistone Crags still stood, though further buckled by the wind, and Starecross Grange stood proud and gleaming. I rode up to its gate, laying my hand against the ironwork roses and staring through at the house. I felt more connection to it than I thought I would – perhaps having met the ghost that lingered in it had dispelled my unease – and yet, I had no real desire to stop. I was aware of Hurtfew Abbey being close by, though a quirk of geography hid it from my view. As much as I tried to tell myself it was a bad idea, I urged my horse onward. My heart faltered more than once, but I refused to let myself turn back. I had come this far; I would not turn back for the sake of a mile.

I was hollered as I rode up to the gate, and was struck by a sense of déjà vu – but when I looked up, Mr Childermass was smiling.

“Welcome back to Yorkshire, Mr Segundus,” he said as I dismounted. His smile was infectious, and I found myself returning it.

“Good morning, Mr Childermass. I have missed it.”

“Of course you have. No better place for a magician than Yorkshire. Hannah has missed you, too, she hasn’t stopped mithering me all year.”

“Have you?” I asked, asking the question without having realised I was going to.

His smile faded, and he swallowed. “One thing at a time, Mr Segundus.”

It was not a no. I held that close as we walked, just as before, around to the back door – upon which threshold I was enveloped by fabric, warm arms and the smell of fresh bread.

Hannah kissed my cheek with a fierce kind of joy, and then dragged me inside. “We have missed you, John, it’s been extremely quiet without you-”

“Come now Hannah, don’t lie to the man for platitude’s sake.”

“Hush, John. It _has_ been quiet, John – oh, of course, we’ve never had so many arguments under one roof but it’s hardly the same thing – sit, John, sit – not _you_ , John, you’re to fetch Gilbert – sit, please.”

I, rather bewildered, sat. Hannah beamed at me, and squeezed my shoulder. She seemed far warmer than she had been; she had a swirling way of moving that suggested a happy kind of busyness, and her eyes were brighter.

“How are you?” she asked, a slight sorrowful cadence entering her voice.

“Well enough. I spent much of the year tutoring the sons of a friend’s cousin.”

“You never wrote.”

“I didn’t think it would be – appreciated. How have you been?”

“No. No. You’re not getting another story out of me, John Segundus. You’re staying to find it all out yourself.”

“But Mr Childermass-”

“Is a fool who needs to learn to appreciate good things when they’re sitting in his kitchen.”

I spluttered a little, but was saved from replying by footsteps in the hall. Mr Childermass came in, saying something in a low tone to someone behind him. I was slightly scared to watch – I had left so quickly that I had barely seen the Mr Norrell I had heard so much of. I could still remember John’s expression when he walked through the library doors, as much as it pained me to, and I had been too absorbed in my own emotions to watch theirs.

Mr Norrell, for it was indeed he John had been speaking to, was a small, bespectacled man – shorter even than myself – with a pinched, querulous expression that gave him more years than his age warranted. He saw me as he came in, and his small, watery eyes widened – he focused immediately on the floor, shuffling his feet a little like a shy child. He spared a sideways glance to John, who nodded, and then he straightened up, walking towards my chair with a little more confidence.

“I am led to believe that I owe you my thanks, Mr Segundus,” he said, in a quiet, dusty kind of voice, talking straight over my protest, “And also thanks on behalf of Mr Strange.”

“You are welcome,” I said, blushing slightly, though I did not fail to notice he had given no real thanks.

He nodded, and then turned to John. “I will see you in the library, John.”

John _mm_ ’d in agreement and Norrell left, very quickly for a man so prone to shuffling.

Hannah rolled her eyes. “Don’t mind him, he is grateful, that’s just his way.”

John _mm_ ’d again, and I knew there was a question I should broach, I just wasn’t sure how to.

“Is Mr Strange-”

“He’s back down in Shropshire,” John said, with less bitterness than I expected to hear, “There’s a woman he wants to marry, apparently.”

I frowned. “But he and Mr Norrell…” I trailed off, unable to phrase what I wanted to say. Hannah, across the table from us, smiled in a vaguely worrying way and then stood up, saying she was needed elsewhere.

John tried to protest, but she raised her eyebrows and he quietened.

A few moments after she left, John cleared his throat, running his fingertips in circles on the table top.

I expected him to speak, but he didn’t, and so I did.

“I thought Mr Norrell and Mr Strange – had an arrangement.”

“They did,” he said, his voice suddenly raw, “They do – but the, the, ah – the terms of the arrangement do not forbid the forming of other such arrangements.”

I smiled at the way he had put it discreetly for my benefit, and it made me bold. “You mean to say that Jonathan Strange can be in love with his fiancée, and with Mr Norrell.”

“I mean to say,” he smiled back.

“Does this…paradigm stretch to other members of the household?”

His smile widened a little. “’Appen it might,” he whispered, “If a certain person would oblige me.”

I reached for his hand, but before I could touch him he stood up with a start and rushed over to the other side of the room.

“But this is not what I wrote to you for,” he said, his words rushed, and he picked up a roll of paper from where it stood against a cupboard door, “Hannah told me – and I thought-”

He sat back down and rolled the paper out in front of me, to reveal a series of sketched out floorplans, with figures interspersed with notes around the edges.

“How do you feel about opening a school with me, John?”

I stared at the plans, trailing my fingers over them until I recognised Starecross. I turned to him, my eyes wide, and saw his smile faltering.

Before it could fade completely, I wrapped my hand around the back of his neck and kissed him.

“Yes,” I said.


End file.
